Inside the Fire
by xDreamlessx
Summary: Abandoned and alone, Bella is left completely defenceless when Victoria comes for her. But what happens when Victoria's own pain and losses lead to a strange attraction which Bella unwittingly finds herself reciprocating? Will they be able to contain the volatile chemistry between them, or will it consume them? Bella/Victoria
1. Chapter 1

**AN: Just a couple things to mention. This story is mostly canon aside from three things: 1) No special vampire gifts, 2) no wolves, and 3) no Volturi. These changes are to avoid needless plot mechanics and narrow the focus to Bella and Victoria. The title of this story is from a song.**

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Inside the Fire

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Chapter 1:

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Four months she had been stalking her. Watching her. Dressed in jeans and a hoody with the hood up to conceal her flaming red hair, her blood red eyes. Waiting.

In the morning she would be outside her house, sitting inconspicuously at a bus stop several houses down the block. Observing first the father leaving while it was still dark and waiting another two hours as dawn broke over the neighbourhood, cold and gray and bearing with it a fog that moved in like a plague. The girl would then emerge from the front door with her bookbag slung over her shoulder, dressed much like the stalker herself in jeans and a hoody. Locking the door behind her and trudging across the dew soaked grass, slumped, dim, apparitional in the mist. As if part of her had already passed on and left only this residual image in the world. Climbing into her rusty red truck and coaxing the engine to life in fits and starts and pulling away from the curb and driving to school.

She had memorized the girl's routine. Such routine as it was. Most days she simply went to school and home again. In four months she had no contact from the coven who used to occupy this area. They seemed to have abandoned her. That was good for Victoria. Very good.

That afternoon she followed the girl to a grocery store and watched her wander the aisles with a basket in the crook of her arm. Victoria kept her hood up to conceal her distinctive hair and pretended to examine a packet of batteries on a rack, her eyes staring at nothing but the girl. Watching her take down a box of cereal from a shelf and read the back of it. Observing her pale face, the small movements of her large dark eyes. Her long dark hair. Her scent was very faintly discernible in the still air and it filled Victoria with thirst, her red eyes all but glowing under her hood. Finally she let the batteries slip from her fingers and sauntered out into the aisle. She approached the girl swiftly, surely, not taking her eyes from her. The girl was setting the cereal into her basket and she turned around directly into the hooded stranger.

A small collision, a puff of scent. The box slapped on the linoleum floor.

"Oh," the girl said. "Sorry."

"No problem," Victoria replied.

The girl had bent to fetch up the box. Victoria did not step back. She allowed the girl to kneel directly at her feet, looking down at the back of her head. She could kill her any time she wished. Even now.

The girl rose and looked at the stranger uncomfortably. She saw the red eyes under the hood and the white face. White like pearl and as lustrous. Victoria heard her heart skip a beat but she did not seem to recognize her. Then she turned away and continued down the aisle and did not look back.

—

Bella when she got home with the groceries still could not get those eyes out of her head. Vampire eyes. But she didn't know of any vampires in Forks and did not know what to do about it even if she did, so she did nothing. She made dinner, marinating the steaks and peeling potatoes before sitting down at the kitchen table to do homework. Jotting notes and pausing midsentence as her mind wandered to those eyes. So red. So bright. She cooked the steaks after her father came home and they sat down together, her dad tucking a napkin into the collar of his uniform shirt. He was the local police chief. They started eating and after a while he noticed his daughter's quietness.

"You okay, Bells?"

"Yeah. Just thinking."

"About _him_?"

Bella shook her head. As she did so, her eyes flickered at the refrigerator where a photograph from prom was pinned down with magnets. Her and Edward. Smiling. Happy. Him in his tuxedo and her in her blue gown. Her hair styled and earrings in her ears. She looked away and back at her plate.

"No," she said.

"So what's wrong?"

"Nothing. I thought I saw something at the market."

"Saw what?"

"Nothing. Just something weird."

He nodded, not pressing it. He sawed off a section of steak with his knife and ate it and took a drink from a beer bottle. Bella hadn't touched her own steak and was only eating the vegetables. The silence stretched and finally her father set the bottle back down.

"So how are you feeling these days, anyway?"

"I'm alright."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm fine, dad."

"I'm just worried about you, Bells."

Bella hadn't looked up from her plate. She knew what he was worried about. She was worried about the same thing. There used to be a straight-razor in a bathroom drawer but he had gotten rid of it. She knew because she had looked for it.

Those red eyes stayed with her for the rest of the night but were mostly gone the next morning. Nothing much stayed with her these days. Movies, TV shows. Music. School. Life largely seemed to be passing her by at this point. As if she was only watching it unfold and without even much interest. Driving to school in rain or drizzle and home again in the same weather or worse.

Sitting through classes with friends or acquaintances that she hardly talked to anymore and whom hardly talked to her either. Following them through the halls and corridors, up the stairs, standing with them at their lockers or in line in the cafeteria. No idea what they were talking about. Some boy who was an asshole. Bella knew all about boys who were assholes. One of them in particular.

They sat with their trays at one of the tables and Bella ate woodenly, her eyes drifting to a certain other table. An empty table in the corner which had once been known as the Cullen Table. Where Edward used to sit with his family and pretend to eat while constantly sneaking glances at her. Now he was gone and it was Bella sneaking glances at nothing at all.

"Bella," Jessica said. "Hello?"

Bella turned to her. Not startled, not annoyed, not bored. Just turning to her. "Yeah?"

Jessica looked at her with disgust on her small rat-like face. "Jeez, were you even listening?"

"No. Sorry."

"You know, no offence, Bella, but it's really pathetic to be this depressed over a boyfriend. I mean, seriously, get over it already."

"He was more than a boyfriend."

"What was he then? Your soulmate? Jesus. That's even more pathetic."

Bella shrugged and took a bite of her sandwich. Angela was watching me with sympathy.

"Hey, we were gonna go see a movie afterschool," she said. "Wanna come?"

"Nah, it's alright."

"Come on, come see a movie."

"Nah, I better not."

"Please?"

Bella wound up going. They took her truck, neither of her friends with cars of their own. The movie was a romantic comedy that came out a week ago. The theatre was utterly empty aside from the three of them in one of the middle rows. Jessica had her phone out and wouldn't stop talking about how crap the movie was. Bella just watched it. Admiring the male lead wistfully. Until after a while she had to use the bathroom and rose to her feet. Behind them someone else had entered the theatre and taken a seat in the back row. Just a dark hooded shape back there. Bella watched it as she went by and as she went by the hood turned slightly and beneath it was a pale face and a pair of red eyes that glowed like jewels in the pale light of the movie. Bella continued out of the theatre and into the bathroom. Her heart had started racing. She didn't know what to do. Finally she washed her hands and went back into the theatre. The hooded figure was gone but she kept looking over her shoulder for the rest of the movie.

—

Victoria after leaving the theatre went directly to the girl's house, knowing that neither her nor her father would be home. She had waited months in order to be sure the other coven would not return and now she could wait no longer. She had let the girl notice her twice and the third time would be the last.

She had stolen a key a long time ago and now she let herself in through the front door, pushing back her hood to expose her bright orange hair. The father's police cruiser was not parked outside but she stood in the foyer anyway, listening for any kind of sound that might react to her closing the door. There was nothing. She wandered in. It wasn't the first time she had been here but she explored a bit anyway. Strolling through the living room and trailing a hand across the back rest of the sofa. Where the girl and her father would watch football games while the girl read a novel. She continued into the kitchen and looked at the photograph on the refrigerator. The girl and the murderer of her mate. Victoria stared at it. She had no photographs of her own mate. No likeness but what she kept in her heart. She stared at it for a long time and then she pulled it off the refrigerator and scrunched it into a ball and left it laying on the kitchen floor.

Upstairs she went directly to the girl's bedroom. Where her scent was thickest. The smell made her throat burn and filled her with even more anger. She stood there looking around. There was a desk in the corner with a computer on it and posters of certain rock groups on the wall behind it. Disturbed. Avenged Sevenfold. Demonic imagery of bats and blood. Beside the keyboard was a small cluster of nailpolish bottles. Victoria took one up and examined the shade. Black. Nice. She set it down and took up a small A5 notebook. The covers were black leather and the insides were filled with various attempts at poetry. The script was in black ink and almost every line contained words scrubbed out and changed. Victoria flipped the pages. There was one small unfinished verse toward the end of the journal that caught her eye.

_Fire,_

_All I desire._

_As I begin to turn cold and run out of time._

_Sever,_

_Now and forever._

_Surrender my soul and…_

And that's as far as the girl's wit had carried her. A poem about suicide. Interesting. A shame she would never have the chance to finish it. Victoria closed the notebook and set it back on the desk. The bed was against the other wall. She sat down on it and felt herself descending into a sweet miasma of the girl's scent. She closed her eyes for a moment. They were darker when they opened. She looked at the bed and brushed her hand across the sheet. As if to correct the wrinkles. Then she took up the girl's pillow and lifted it to her nose. Her eyes fell closed again. Her throat burned. The girl had a scent unlike any human she had ever encountered. She could understand why her mate had wanted her so. She wanted her in the same way. Victoria lowered the pillow and set it back where she got it from. From downstairs came the click and clatter of the front door opening and she smiled. Her eyes were now fully black.

—

The bedroom door was open and Bella just walked in and tossed her bag by the desk.

Then she noticed the woman sitting on her bed.

She froze and stared, every bone in her body locking into place. It was the same woman she had seen at the grocery store a few days ago only this time her eyes were black and the hood was down to reveal the fire of her long orange hair. It was the hair she recognized. Bella's heart commenced slamming against her ribcage.

"You," she whispered.

The woman smiled. Then she rose from the bed.

Bella inched away, circling toward the desk. Slowly, cautiously, trying not to panic. As if she didn't want to make any sudden movements. The woman pushed the door closed and turned back.

"Can you guess why I'm here?"

"No."

"My mate was a hunter. He never left a hunt incomplete. I'm here to finish it for him."

Bella didn't move. She was standing by the desk, trembling just slightly like a leaf in strong wind. She hadn't taken her eyes off the intruder. The intruder tilted her head.

"You're not going to scream?"

"I don't know."

"You look like you might."

"Why are you here?"

"I just told you."

Bella tried not to break down. She bit her lip and looked away. The woman followed her gaze across the room as if to see what was there and turned back to her.

"I see your protectors have left you," she said. "I must admit I'm curious why."

"They said it was too dangerous for me to be a part of their lives."

"How ironic."

"Tell me about it."

"You've been depressed. I take it the breakup wasn't mutual."

"What do you care?"

"Because I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't be happy to inflict the same pain on your mate by killing you as he inflicted on me by killing James. That's why."

"Then I guess you're gonna be disappointed. He dumped me."

The woman had her arms folded loosely under her breasts and now she snorted. As if she was disappointed to hear that but it didn't really matter. Bella's eyes had filled with tears and she still hadn't moved a muscle.

"Do you have any way to contact him?" the woman asked.

"No."

"None at all?"

"No."

"Would he notice if you were to disappear? Do you suspect he's keeping tabs on you?"

"I don't know."

A tear dropped onto her cheek which broke her paralysis as she reached to wipe it away. She sniffed. The woman observed this with a certain coldness and Bella noticed the blackness of her eyes had faded to a deep burgundy. Then she sighed and unfolded her arms.

"Well," she said. "We'd better leave before your father gets home."

"What do you mean?"

"It's too risky to leave a crime scene, particularly within the house of a police chief. Luckily, your depression will lead people to believe you simply went off somewhere to commit suicide."

"No," Bella said as the woman advanced on her. "Nooo—!"

She tried to squirm past and get to the door but the woman grabbed her and threw her into the desk, knocking the monitor over the edge and some of the nailpolish bottles, before wrenching her back around by the hair.

Those eyes had gone solid black again and they filled Bella with fear.

"Listen to me," the woman hissed. "You are mine now. Resistance will only make it worse for you—and for your father. Do you understand?"

Bella winced in pain from the hand clenching in her hair.

"Nod if you understand."

Bella nodded desperately. The woman stared into her terrified eyes for a moment more and then released her. Bella whimpered, her scalp burning.

"Fix the desk," the woman told her. "There can be no sign of abduction."

The monitor was still working and it was hanging over the edge by its cord. Bella picked it up and righted it and then she picked up the nailpolish bottles as well.

"Good," the woman said. "Do you have the keys to your truck?"

Bella took them out of her jeans pocket and handed them over. The woman took them, watching Bella as if wary against any more escape attempts. Then she turned slightly to make way.

"Let's go," she said.

Bella stood there helplessly. She looked at the door and at the woman. Behind her in the window the sun was beginning to set and there was an orange cast to the glass. She lifted her tearfilled eyes and shook her head.

"Please, don't do this," she said. "Please…"

But the woman just took her arm and shoved her out into the corridor. "It's too late for any of that," she said. "Go."

Bella stumbled down the corridor and down the stairs. She was sniffing back tears and wiping her nose. Outside the wind was cold and the sun was continuing to set. She looked up and down the street but there was no one on the sidewalks or on any of the lawns and nothing anyone could do even if there was. Vampires had superstrength and they could move at the speed of sound. No one could help her.

They drove toward the dusk until the sun was gone and the world went dim and then they kept driving. They were leaving the town behind and headed into the forest. Bella was staring out the window and the window had glazed over in the darkness. She could see her reflection racing among the trees. Pale. Darkhaired. There were no more tears in her eyes and not much fear. She blinked slowly. Many nights she had fallen asleep thinking about death but she had never imagined it like this.

After a while she began to recognize the road they were on and soon she saw the old Cullen house emerge from around the bend. It sat there above the road, looming in the moonlight in its small grove of trees, a large mansion of steel and glass sheltered away from the world where the inhabitants could live in isolation. She glanced at the woman as she pulled up in the gravel driveway.

"What are we doing here?" she asked.

The woman opened the door. "The house is still under lease. We won't be disturbed here. Get out."

The house inside still had some furniture. Bella could see the shapes of the living room in the darkness. Then the woman flipped on a lightswitch. All the family's personal effects were gone and all that remained was the glass coffeetable, the creamcolored couch, and the ornate steel screen in front of the empty fireplace which was black and held the patterns of leaves.

"Sit down," the woman said.

Bella did, on the couch, composing her hands in her lap and watching the woman from under her eyebrows as the woman went over to the windows and pulled back the curtain to look out.

"I have to admit, this is a bit awkward," she was saying. "I had expected you to be more resistant."

She turned back to Bella. In the white light of the livingroom her eyes were bright red, as if the lack of a fight had taken all the blackness out of her. Bella took just a little bit of hope from them.

"You don't have to do this," she said, almost in a whisper.

"I'm afraid I do. James never left a hunt incomplete."

"He's dead. Who cares?"

"I care."

"But this isn't fair. None of this is my fault. I never did anything."

"I never said you did."

Bella shook her head, finally beginning to become scared again. She looked up with fresh tears in her eyes. "Please. Don't do this. Just let me go. I won't say anything to anyone. I know what it's like when you lose someone."

"You do, do you?"

"Yes."

"I don't think so. James and I were lovers for over three hundred years. Can you even comprehend that? He was my mate. Now I have nothing. Nothing."

"I have nothing either."

"You _are_ nothing. Just some stupid girl who got involved in things she shouldn't have."

Bella started crying. A sob came out of her and she lowered her face into her hands. The woman sighed at the display and then she took off her hoody and tossed it on one of the sofas, waiting for her to calm down. She put her fingers in her ravishing red hair and fluffed it out and sighed again. Bella stopped crying after a while and looked up bravely.

"Can you at least make it quick?" she asked.

The woman turned, her eyebrows lifting in something like surprise. Bella sniffed one more time to herself.

"I'm not afraid to die," she said. "I'm really not. I've even thought about it. I just don't want to suffer."

The woman studied her, her eyes flickering up and down that frail form huddled on the couch. "I'm sure you don't," she said. "But I'm afraid it's not that simple. Your blood won't pump if your heart stops beating and the terror and adrenaline will make it pump even more."

Bella's face went chalk white and she looked down.

"Oh god," she said.

The woman continued to study her for a moment. Almost smiling. Then she came around and sat on the corner of the coffeetable under the chrome frame where the glass wouldn't break, right in front of Bella.

"Look at me," she said.

Bella looked up. Under the fluorescent light the woman's hair was a halo of fire and her skin was marblewhite. There was a slight smile to her lips or a smirk and her lips were naturally a rich red color. She tilted her head slightly and let her sparkling red eyes move over Bella's frightened face.

"In all honesty, I do feel sorry for you," she said. "A messy death is perhaps an indignity you don't deserve. So I'll tell you what I'll do. I must kill you to honor James. But I don't have to feed from you. That way it'll be quick and relatively painless. How does that suit you?"

Bella didn't answer. She just sat there on the couch, trembling, shivering, watching the other woman's face.

"Will you make sure my father never finds me?" she asked.

"I hadn't planned to," the woman said. "I can't leave any evidence, anyway."

Bella nodded. She realized she had just given permission for her own murder and her heart sank into her stomach.

The woman rose from the coffeetable and took a seat beside Bella on the couch. Bella watched her, shrinking back until the woman put an arm around her. As if they were snuggling down to watch a movie on a date. Then she lowered Bella's head into her lap and wove her fingers into Bella's hair in order to get a good grip on her skull.

Bella was still shivering, almost shuddering by now. She couldn't believe she was about to die. She was laying with her cheek on the woman's thigh, as if for a nap, and she could feel the woman's cool fingers almost caressing into her scalp. Then she heard the soft sound of a deep breath.

"It is a shame, though," the woman murmured. "You do smell delicious."

Bella lay there. Her eyes darted across the room, the white walls, the furniture. The woman's fingers were practically massaging her scalp, as if to coax the scent out of her hair.

"What are you waiting for?" Bella whispered.

The woman looked down. Bella looked up from her lap. The woman's eyes were a dark color like wine and she seemed oddly hesitant, as if this was all wrong and she didn't know why. She looked at Bella and studied her face and said:

"Do you believe that man was your mate?"

"Edward?"

"Yes. Edward."

"Yes. He was."

"And he left you. Why did he do that?"

"To protect me."

"So you said. Yet here you are."

Bella didn't answer. She continued looking up at her for a moment and then turned away. "Just do it."

Then she closed her eyes. And waited. And waited. She wasn't even afraid. Almost eager for it to all be over. But it didn't happen. The woman continued to hesitate and then she exhaled in frustration and pushed Bella's head away.

"It's pointless," she said. "Just go."

Bella rose up, her hair all dishevelled. "What?"

"Go. Get out."

"Are you sure?"

"Now."

"But does this mean…"

"_Leave_!"

Bella stumbled backwards off the couch, almost crashing into the coffeetable. She got to her feet and stared wildly at the woman there on the sofa. She had crossed her legs and turned away, sitting with a chilling elegance as she gazed out the window in the far wall. Nothing out there but darkness.

Bella spun and ran out.

The keys were still in her truck and her heart hammered the entire drive home. She kept thinking the woman would come chase her on foot and tear her out of the cab. She kept her eyes on the rearview and both sideview mirrors but there was no sign of her. Just the endless staccato dark of the trees whipping past.

Soon she was back in Forks. She didn't have her phone with her and she wasn't sure how late it was. She figured she had to have been gone for at least two hours. Her dad would be home by now and wondering where she was. And what to tell him? That she had briefly been abducted by a redheaded vampiress bent on honoring her fallen mate by destroying her? Bella wiped her eyes with her fingers and turned into her neighbourhood. She didn't know what she was going to tell him. She didn't even know if the woman had truly let her go or if this was just a momentary reprieve.

Her dad must've heard the truck pull up because he had come to the front door. Bella saw him as she came in, wearing a worried frown, and tried to give him a smile.

"Hey, dad."

"It's late, Bells. Where've you been?"

"Nowhere. Just driving."

"Driving?"

"Yeah, sorry. I left my phone in my bag. I'll get started on dinner in just a second, okay?"

Then she trotted up the stairs and left him there.

He didn't mention it again for the rest of the night. Neither did she. She made dinner and they ate together quietly, not speaking. The pasta was like eating shredded newspaper with spaghetti sauce and after they were done she gathered up the dishes and washed them in the sink. While she was drying them, she noticed something on the floor in the corner. It was a balled up photograph. She picked it up and smoothed it out. Her prom photo with Edward. She looked at the refrigerator and realized that it must've been that woman who took it down. She was going to put it back but it was all creased and ruined and eventually she just tore it up and threw it in the trash.

After brushing her teeth she went into her room and checked to make sure the window was locked. It was. She wasn't sure how that woman had gained access to the house or if she would do it again and that night after going to bed she lay for a long in the dark and wondered what she was supposed to do. Her father was a police chief but he couldn't protect her. Edward could, but he was gone. Without so much as a phone number or an email address. Now she was alone. She had no one, nothing, and after a while she fell asleep.

—


	2. Chapter 2

—

Chapter 2:

—

Days to come Bella remained on the lookout for any hint of hood or red hair. Peering through the rain-spattered windows of her truck, to and from school. Eyeing the wet sidewalks, the empty shopfronts. People with umbrellas or in rainslickers, wandering through the streets on their own obscure purposes. She had begun to believe that the woman had left the area. Abandoned her hunt. Yet even so she pulled up outside her house every afternoon with something like fear in her heart. Crossing the lawn in the rain and ascending the stairs inside with her hair damp and her ears straining to hear any noise at all above the rattle of rain on the roof. Wondering if when she opened her bedroom door she would find the woman again waiting to finish what she started. Only for relief to flood her veins like a shot of heroin as the room was revealed to be empty. Dropping her bag by her desk and releasing the breath she had been holding. She hadn't felt this alive in months and the irony was not lost on her.

—

That night at the local medical center a shadowy figure scaled the tall chainlink fence at the rear of the premises. A shade that swung up soundlessly aside from the slight metallic rattle of the gate before dropping down again on the other side, landing in a crouch on the lid of a dumpster stamped with a sign that warned of medical waste. She paused there for a moment, peering out from under her hood. The rain had ceased and there was no activity at all. The asphalt was still wet and she made a splash in one of the puddles as she hopped down from the dumpster and crossed to the service door.

Inside was quiet. A distant hum of machinery. The ring of a phone down the corridor and a receptionist's soft voice as she answered. Victoria turned and went up some stairs. The corridor was dim and painted peagreen and there were stacks of linen and doors with bedridden patients behind them. She went on with her head down. She passed a nurse but the nurse mistook her for a visitor and merely glanced as she went by. Victoria hated to leave a witness but there was no help for it. The most the nurse would be able to identify was a person in a hood.

Further down the corridor she entered an empty doctor's office off the main bloodbank. She paused in the doorway to make sure it was empty and then she moved over to the desk and swept her hand across it, brushing aside all the paperwork, the mouse and keyboard, a wire basket of folders. Knocking it all to the ground with as little rancour and noise as possible. She then tipped over a bookcase, spilling the dusty volumes onto the floor, and she yanked down a display skeleton as well and tore it apart, glancing toward the door to make sure no one heard or came to investigate. When she was satisfied with the damage she'd done she filled the pockets of her hoody with bottles of painkillers and other pills, to disguise the break in as the work of a common junkie, and continued into the main bloodbank.

The chamber was cold and the refrigerators all had lights inside that illuminated their contents, row on row of blood bags hanging from racks behind glass doors like a room of organic mainframes. Victoria found a smaller refrigerator and set it on a stainless steel bench before turning back to the larger refrigerators and reaching directly through the glass, casually, carelessly, the glass breaking up and raining down on her wrist without leaving so much as a scratch. She filled up the smaller refrigerator with as much as it could carry and then she closed it and locked it and stood there glaring at it, ashamed alike of what her feeding habits had degenerated too and for her inability to kill that girl. She still didn't know what had come over her but it didn't matter. She would come for the girl again soon and next time there would be no pleading and no second thoughts and no easy death. Next time she was going to bathe in her blood.

A noise came from the outer office. Someone had stumbled upon her crime scene. Victoria had a fleeting thought to kill whoever it was as an appetizer but the investigation would be endless. Instead she yanked the cord of her small refrigerator out of the wall, causing its contents to go dark, and hefted it up as if it weighed nothing. It was as large as a washing machine. She then bumped open the far door with her hip, snapping the steel bolt it was locked with, and disappeared into the corridor.

—

The next day at school Bella was sitting with Angela in biology. The classroom was quiet, everyone bent to their notebooks. Angela glanced at her, watching her lean to the microscope, and something in her friend's face must've bought Edward to mind.

"You and Edward first met in biology, huh?" she asked in a quiet whisper.

"Yeah."

"Did you ever hear anything from him after he left?"

"No."

"Still can't believe he dumped you like that. Without even telling you where he was going."

"Me either."

"Guess he was just an asshole. You're probably better off without him."

Bella smiled at Angela's attempt to bolster her self-worth. It didn't work, though. She could still remember that day she met him. How he had kept his nose averted from her scent and how embarrassed that had made her. Only to later find out how close he had come to tearing her to shreds right there in the classroom from the sheer desirability of her. Looking back, she kind of wished he had. It would've been better than being dumped.

Angela was watching her in concern. "You okay, Bella?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"You've just been really weird lately. Even weirder than normal."

"I'm fine."

"You know, me and Jess were planning a trip to Port Angeles. You could come if you want."

"Nah."

"You sure?"

"Yeah," she said. Then she glanced at her friend and chuckled at the expression on her face. "It's alright, Ange. You don't have to try and drag me around everywhere you go. I'll be alright, okay?"

"If you say so," Angela said, but she seemed more concerned than ever.

It rained again that afternoon and by now she had pretty much quit watching out the windows of her truck as she drove home. It had been over a week and it didn't seem important anymore. She figured the woman was long gone and not coming back. The fear had faded and all that was left was a strange and sullen disappointment, as if her very survival had proven to be nothing but yet another indignity she was forced to put up with. Lacking the courage to commit suicide, being murdered would've suited her just fine. She could still remember the feel of those fingers in her hair as the woman took a grip to snap her neck. One sharp twist and it would've all been over. A broken neck to go along with her broken heart. But even that small convenience was denied to her. Like everything in her life, teased only for a moment before being taken away.

That night her father was late coming home from work and the phone rang while Bella was peeling potatoes in the sink. She wiped her hands on a dishtowel and grabbed the receiver off the wall.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Bells, it's me," said her dad. "I'm gonna be a bit late tonight, but you go ahead and eat, alright?"

"What's going on?"

"Oh, nothing much. There was a break in at the medical center, that's all. Second time in the last three months. They trashed the place and took some pills. Or she did, I should say."

"She?"

"Yeah, looks like it was some girl. After the last break in they installed some extra cameras. Strong girl, too. She absconded with an entire refrigerator full of blood. Just carried it out like it weighed nothing."

Bella was standing there with a knife in one hand and a half-peeled potato in the other. "Blood?"

"Yeah, it's pretty strange. Blood and drugs. Could be some kind of cult thing. Satanists. You never know with these junkies. Anyway, I gotta get back to work. I'll pick up something to eat on the way home."

"Okay. See you later."

"Bye, Bells."

Bella hung up the phone. She stood there, listening to the rain. Then she went back to the sink and continued peeling the potatoes.

Over the next few days she was again on the lookout, reinvigorated in her vigilance. She knew now that the woman was still in town. Somewhere. Resupplied and waiting. But she never saw her and soon she began to have doubts. What if the robbery at the medical center was only one last score before leaving town for good? What if it wasn't even her? She pressed her father for details on the case but they hardly seemed to be investigating it. All he could tell her was that the suspect was female and strong enough to lift a two hundred pound refrigerator. Vampire strong.

On the fourth day while driving home from school she turned north and took the road to the old Cullen house. She couldn't explain why and she had no idea what she hoped to find. It took an hour to get there and it was still mid-afternoon. She pulled up in the driveway under a sky of pure white overcast and got out. Dead silence. No wind. Not even a bird in the forest. She approached the house, crunching in the gravel, and stepped onto the porch. The door was heavy oak with a brass knocker. She didn't know whether to knock or not. Instead she leaned to one of the panes of glass and looked in. The glass was thick and warped and she could see nothing but darkness inside. She turned and looked at the yard. The hedges, the picket fence. The mailbox. All of it shadowless and still in the windless silence. Bella turned back to the door and almost reached for the knocker. But she didn't. She went back to her truck and opened the door and across the street she thought she saw something disappear behind a tree. A glimmer of red. Like a nymph hiding in the woods out there. She froze with the door of the truck half open and then she got in and drove home.

In bed that night she chided her cowardice and decided to go back the next day. She had nothing to lose and she needed to know.

It was a Saturday and she drove out in the morning after making some excuses to her father. It was before lunchtime when she arrived and this time she sat in the truck for a long time before she got out. The bravery she had musted up the prior night seemed to be failing her. It was one thing to long for death from the safety of your bed, it was another to come looking for it in the cold light of day. But she told herself the woman probably wasn't even here and got out her truck. She looked across the road behind her at where she'd seen movement in the forest yesterday but there was nothing. Only trees.

Once again she went up to the door and looked through the panes of glass but again there was nothing inside but murk and darkness. She considered knocking on the door but it felt too embarrassing. Instead she tried the doorknob and she was surprised as the door simply swung open. Creaking. She froze at the sound, waiting to make sure nothing would follow it. Then she entered. Into this familiar house where her boyfriend once lived. Empty aside from the skeletal furniture. No more paintings on the walls of the corridor. No more flowers on the sideboards. The livingroom was on her left through an archway. The curtains were closed and it was very dim. She looked at the couch, remembering how she had almost lost her life there only a week ago. She tried to picture the same scene now or something similar, questioning how prepared to die she really was if she did indeed find that woman here. She turned and continued down the corridor.

Rounding the corner into the kitchen she found something that froze every bone in her body.

A refrigerator full of blood.

It was sitting on the kitchen counter like any other appliance, plugged into a socket over the phone. She stared at it as if she didn't understand it. The door was glass and she could see the bags of blood inside it, each stamped with a hospital label. Also on the counter were a dozen pill bottles that seemed to be discarded there. She picked one of them up. It's label was blank but the pills inside were Percocet. Painkillers. She put the bottle down and there was a sound behind her. She spun around. There was no one there. But there had to be. The woman had been living here. Victoria. Was she here right now?

Bella went back out into the hall. On her left was the front door and her truck outside. On her right was the stairs.

She went up the stairs.

The upstairs corridor was even darker. It even seemed more silent somehow. Bella crept like a catburglar, stepping on her toes in her boots. She opened one of the bedrooms. Bare and empty. She continued down the corridor and opened the next one.

The curtains were open and the room was filled with light. There was a doublebed against one wall with a bare mattress on it and a dresser against another wall with the top drawer open. Hanging from the corner of the drawer was a bra. She went over and looked into the drawer. It was filled with clothes and there were clothes on the floor too. Socks. A black hoody that seemed familiar. She didn't touch any of it. She toed the pile at her feet with her boot, as if to check there was nothing nesting in it, and then she turned around.

In the corner of the room was a small colony of red kerosene cans. She looked at them. The sides of the cans were stamped with the words:

_Highly Flammable_

At first she couldn't understand what a vampire would need with kerosene. Fire was the only thing that could kill a vampire and there was only one vampire in town that she knew of. She thought about that. Then she wondered if maybe this woman might've intended to use the kerosene on herself.

Suddenly it felt like she had been here too long and she had to go. She couldn't remember if the bedroom door had been closed or not when she came in so she just left it open, hurrying down the hall, not bothering to keep quiet. She knew that the woman wasn't home or she would probably be dead by now.

She came trotting down the stairs without incident and left through the front door before climbing into her truck and starting it up. The engine coughed and chugged and finally came to life. As she pulled out of the driveway she looked back at the house in the sideview mirror and she thought she saw something in the window of the bedroom she'd vacated, a shape there, a person, something haunting the upperlevels. Then she turned out into the road and the house only grew small behind her.

—

Victoria grabbed her hoody off the floor of her room and threw it on and then she went out into the corridor and leapt down the stairs in a single bound. She came out of the house just in time to see the rusty red truck disappear around the final bend. At first she stood there. Then she scowled and threw up her hood to cover her hair and leapt across the road like an animal and into the woods.

She followed the truck all the way back to town, keeping to the forest, moving on all fours, weaving among the tree trunks and leaping from ridge to ridge like a panther, black, feline, predatory. It was early afternoon when the girl got home. Victoria came strolling up the sidewalk with her hands in her pockets, watching the girl enter through her front door, and then she turned and went up the driveway, past the police cruiser parked there, and up the side of the house. The girl's bedroom overlooked the backyard and Victoria spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in a dead flower garden under her window, waiting for the father to leave. He never did. By darkness her anger at the invasion of privacy had cooled but she still didn't go. By and by the back door flapped open and the girl came out into the night with a bag of trash. Victoria sidled into the shadows to watch. The girl was wearing a sleeptank and sleepshorts with a loose robe over it and she was barefoot and half hopping from the cold, disposing of the trash bag and then rubbing her arms as she hurried back to the warmth of the house. Victoria watched her from the darkness. The robe was thin and blue and flowing all around her and her legs in those shorts were entirely bare and very white and soft looking. The sight of her made her throat burn and she wanted to leap out right now and pin her to the lawn and rip off her head before a single scream came out of her. But the girl made it inside and the screendoor clattered again and the moment passed.

Victoria slunk back to that space under the window. It wasn't the first night she had passed here. The dirt under her was rounded from all the hours she had sat in this dead flower bed. Beneath this girl's window like a deranged lover. She leaned back against the wall of the house and looked up at the sky. Black. No stars. No moon. A spider crawled over her face and she did not brush it away. She thought about how weak and pathetic this girl going to bed above her was and the thoughts made her angry at herself and she could not account at all for why she hadn't killed her yet.

—

The next day was Sunday and Jessica came to pick her up in her mother's car together with Angela. Bella had agreed to go with them to Port Angeles after all.

The weather had turned off clear and the sky was a pale blue when they got there. The sun was directly overhead, a bright yellow dot in a brighter part of the sky, and yet no heat at all from it, as if it were fake or only an illusion of sun. They spent the day strolling the market at the pier, Jessica and Angela all excited and bubbly, Bella tagging along like something at gunpoint. Jessica had wrapped a bright green sari around her jeans and Angela was wearing a pair of large sunglasses she had bought that she would likely never wear again. Bella was at the next stall over, examining a display of hunting knives. They had ones that were plain and utilitarian, with black handles shaped like grips and flat chrome blades, and then they had others with more artifice to them, with handles of ivory or leather or darkwood with brass inlay, blades that were curved or doublesided or chased with etchings of flowing scrollwork, daggers of damask with a feathergrain in the folded steel, and even little Japanese knives with blades so finely polished they showed the heat treatment of the steel in a pale wave along the edge. Bella took one up and tested it against her wrist there in the middle of the crowded market, wondering if she could do it, why not, who would care. Then she set the knife back and moved on with her friends.

They were there all day and their final stop was a book store. The streets were dark as they came out onto the sidewalk, chatting, carrying bags. Bella carried nothing. They were saying it was probably time to go home and Bella nodded and looked back down the road for no reason.

Standing under a streetlamp on the corner was a woman in a black hoody.

Bella stared at her. Then she turned back to her friends.

"You guys go ahead," she said. "I'll meet you at the car."

"Where're you going?"

"I'll just be a minute."

They looked at her for a second, not pleased at her morbid behaviour all day, and then they glanced at each other and went on, muttering under their breath about how they shouldn't have even bought her.

Bella went the other way, toward that hooded figure on the corner. The streetlamp cast a thick yellow light that seemed to be soaked up by the black fleece of the hoody. The hood lifted slightly as Bella approached and Bella's heart missed a beat.

It was her.

Bella slowed and came to a stop. The woman unleaned from the streetlamp. Under the hood was a pair of ruby red eyes and several locks of orange hair that brushed against her pale cheeks and a smirk that seemed to suggest she had allowed Bella to spot her. Bella didn't know why she would do that but she wasn't afraid. Not this time.

"You don't need the hoody anymore," she said. "I know it's you."

The woman pushed back the hood, revealing the orange flare of her hair which seemed more fire-like than ever under the heavy glow of the streetlamp. Bella was amazed for a moment at how beautiful vampires could be—this one in particular—and said:

"What are you doing here?"

The woman didn't reply. She seemed relieved to have her hair out in the open and now she tossed it left and right, like a woman in a shampoo commercial, before fluffing it with her fingers. Then she looked at Bella.

"I notice you haven't told anyone about me," she said. "Not even your father."

"What would be the point?"

"Nothing. But most people would've panicked and told him anyway."

"The less he knows, the less danger he's in."

"What about the danger to you?"

"Do I look afraid?"

The woman again did not reply to that and even Bella was surprised at her own boldness. She looked away from those red and dangerous eyes and saw the winecolored canvas awning of a restaurant across the street with an inviting warmth in the windowglass beneath. She turned back to Victoria.

"Anyway, you don't have to stalk me," she said. "Come on."

Then she turned and crossed the road. On the opposite sidewalk she looked back. The woman was still standing under the streetlamp and after a moment she turned and followed Bella.

The restaurant was half empty. Dim. Warm. Classical piano in the background. They were seated at a table for two by the front window. The tablecloth was white and a red rose stood in a small vase between them beside a candle in a candleholder.

Victoria sat with a certain elegance, an elbow on the tabletop, her chin braced against her knuckles. Eyeing the girl across the table alertly as if it was the girl herself who was the danger. Bella looked around at the interior of the restaurant and turned back to Victoria.

"Edward once followed me to Port Angeles too," she said. "Before we hooked up."

"Is that so?"

"That was when he first told me about vampires. He was always worried about how dangerous it was for us to be together. I guess it never occurred to him that it would be even more dangerous apart."

The waiter came and placed a plate of linguine with basil pesto in front of Bella before asking Victoria if she had changed her mind. Victoria replied without taking her eyes from Bella that no, she hadn't.

Bella took up her fork and poked at the pasta. "I know it was you who robbed the medical center," she said. "They got you on camera."

"How do you know that?"

"My dad told me."

"What else does he know?"

"Nothing much. Just that someone broke in. I thought you should know. So you don't get caught and hurt anyone."

Victoria sighed and turned to look out the window. "I suppose it was a mistake to rob the same place twice. I should've went out of state."

"If vampires can feed from blood bags, why do they kill humans?"

"For the thrill. Obviously."

"But you haven't been feeding from people in Forks?"

"Have you seen any murders in the paper lately?"

"I guess you didn't want police looking for you before dealing with me."

"You guess correctly."

"Have you been killing people anywhere else?"

"Not lately."

"How come?"

She sighed again and turned back to Bella. Her eyes landed on the rose in the vase and now she plucked it out and touched it to her nose. "Without James, the thrill is largely gone," she said. "Dining alone is never much fun." She took the rose away from her face and smiled. "Wouldn't you agree?"

"I don't know."

"But you must. After all, here you are. You would rather dine with your own murderess than dine alone, would you not?"

"Not really. If it wasn't for you, I'd rather just be alone."

"And what makes me such an attractive dinner companion?"

"I don't know."

The woman snorted at that, as if the girl had said something unintentionally funny, and slipped the rose back into the vase. Bella continued eating, embarrassed now, as if beginning to realize she might be out of her conversational depth.

"So what happens now?" she asked after a while.

"What do you mean?"

"Are you going to kill me?"

Victoria didn't answer. She looked at the girl as if thinking about it. Bella shrugged under the scrutiny.

"I'm just wondering," she said. "Because if you are, I should probably clean my room or something."

"If you're dead, what does it matter?"

"I wouldn't want my dad to find some of my stuff."

"Then I suggest you get your affairs in order. Before it's too late."

"Does that mean you're still going to kill me?"

"Do you want me to?"

"No. Of course not."

"No?"

Bella didn't answer. A frown had grown on her face and she had stopped eating. Victoria smiled and leaned both elbows on the table.

"You are a peculiar girl, Ms Swan," she said. "You have a loving father, decent friends, no issues at school. The only injury you have to resent is the fact that your boyfriend left you. And yet here you are, so eager for death that you'll sit down to dinner with it. Are you honestly that pathetic?"

"No. It's more than just Edward."

"What then?"

"Why should I tell you?"

"Do you know what I think?"

"What do you think?"

"I think you're just pathetic."

"Well, fuck you then."

Victoria smiled some more and leaned back and tapped her fingernails on the tabletop, her eyes bright with amusement and sparkling red. Bella glared at her and pushed away her food.

"It's your fault Edward left, you know," she said.

Victoria didn't reply. Bella continued to glare at her.

"He left because he blamed himself," she said. "For putting me in danger and exposing me to things like you and James. If you had never come along, he never would've left."

"Well, that's very unfortunate. But you'll have to forgive me if I don't have much sympathy for you."

"Why not? I feel sorry for you."

"Then you're a fool."

"I'm a fool then. I don't care. I know how you feel. I feel the same way. I know how much it hurts when you lose someone you love. How could I not feel sorry for you?"

"You think you know how I feel?"

"Yes."

"Then you are one very arrogant young girl. James was my mate. We were together over three hundred years. Do you honestly think your paltry schoolgirl crush is anything similar to what I have experienced? To what I have lost?"

"Yes. I do."

Victoria snorted and shook her head. Bella realized maybe she had gotten carried away and backpedalled a bit.

"All I mean is that I know what it's like when you lose something you can't live without," she said. "Edward wasn't only my boyfriend. He was a vampire. He was perfect. He was like a god to me. Do you have any idea how lucky I felt just to be with him? To be his mate? He was going to turn me into a vampire just like him and we were going to be together forever. I believed that. I truly did. And now…now he's gone."

Her eyes were swimming and she used a napkin to wipe them. Then she looked up again.

"You think you know what heartbreak is," she said, "but _I'm_ the one who's sitting here waiting to die. You're just the one who wants to kill me."

Victoria didn't answer. She was watching the girl, not with sympathy but at least with patience. Bella blew her nose on the napkin.

"You had three hundred years, but I had nothing," she said. "That's the worst thing. It was taken from me before it even started. Now I can't see the point to anything ever again. Everyone thinks I'm crazy for being so depressed over a highschool fling and I've never been able to explain why. This is the first time I've ever been able to talk about it." She wiped her eyes again and looked up. "Did you love James?"

"He was my mate."

"Tell me about him."

"I'm not sure the details should be heard by such young ears."

"What do you mean?"

"To put it frankly, I was his bitch."

"O-oh."

Victoria smiled slightly. She lowered her eyes to the rose in the vase and she spoke very softly, wistfully. "James was a very aggressive man. Very confident. When he wanted something, he would have it. No matter what. In many ways, I suppose I was just another of his victims. One that he kept, rather than killed."

"And you were cool with that?"

"Oh, yes. I took great comfort in the purity of his intentions. It was simple. Stable. It seemed to be the thing that I had always been missing. It gave me purpose. To be his. I'd never been a terribly independent woman. All I ever wanted was a mate."

"And you called _me_ pathetic."

"Touché."

"But you did love him?"

"Yes. I admired his strength. He was a very strong hunter. He craved strong prey. He rarely met a vampire he didn't want to destroy simply for the fun of it. My only worry was that his games would lead us to danger."

She had spoke while gazing at the rose. Now she sighed and sat back in her chair.

"I suppose I always knew it would come to this," she said. "Either both of us dead or just one. But not a day goes by where I don't wish it had been me instead."

"I guess we're both pretty fucked up, aren't we?"

"Perhaps."

"Are you going to kill me?"

"I would like to."

"But are you?"

Victoria looked at her. Bella looked back. Neither fear nor heartsink in those large dark eyes. Nothing but perfect helplessness to whatever may be required of her.

Then there was a tapping at the window beside them. They both looked and Bella was shocked to see Jessica and Angela waving at her from behind the glass.

"Shit," she said. "It's my friends."

They were coming around to enter the restaurant. Victoria had already rose from her chair and she was taking money out of her pocket. She left a few bills on the tablecloth and smiled at Bella.

"Till we meet again," she said, and then she turned and left just as Angela and Jessica came up.

"Who was that?" Angela asked, glancing back.

Bella didn't answer. She was watching out the window and she saw the woman cross the street, flipping up her hood as she went, before disappearing into an alley and the darkness from whence she came.

Jessica picked at the plate of pesto with her bare hand. "Jeez, Bella, we've been waiting forever for you. What are you doing here? And who the fuck was that redheaded chick?"

"No one, just someone I met."

"And what, you bought her dinner? Are you that depressed over Edward you went lesbo?"

Bella glanced at her and then she checked the money on the table and rose from her chair. "Come on, let's go home."

—


	3. Chapter 3

—

Chapter 3:

—

The next morning Bella stood on the sidewalk with the door of her truck half open, looking up and back the street. The road was empty and not even a leaf stirred in all that grayness. She got into her truck and drove to school.

That afternoon she half expected to come home and find the woman waiting in her room to take her away to her death as she promised the previous night at dinner. But she wasn't there. Nor the next day. Nor the day after. Bella didn't know how to feel about that. She was beginning to get nervous and the anticipation that clawed at the corners of her heart was confusing. She couldn't understand why she was so desperate to see this woman again. She wasn't even feeling all that suicidal anymore. She just wanted to see her. Maybe to talk. To be friends. Was such a thing possible? Could the woman ever change her mind about killing her?

Bella thought it was worth the risk to find out so instead of going home that day she drove up to the Cullen house. This time she knocked on the door but there was no answer. She waited and knocked again. Then she went inside.

There was no one home. She strolled into the kitchen and found the refrigerator exactly as she had seen it the other day, sitting on the counter and plugged into a socket over the phone.

Phone. It was the house phone and Bella still had the number to it from when the Cullens lived here. She kept that in mind and walked briefly through the rest of the house. She wasn't sure if the woman wasn't here or if she simply didn't want to be bothered. Bella went into her bedroom and opened the top dresser drawer. This time she rifled through the clothes, not caring if the woman would notice later on. What was she going to do? Call the police? She had been stalking Bella for months so it was only fair that Bella stalked her back.

She explored a little more but she didn't find much. Just the bare minimum required for living. Or the appearance of living. No music, no TV. No computer. Just clothes and kerosene and a fridge full of blood.

It was over an hour drive back home and she tried the number right away in case the woman had gotten home. It rang. No one answered. Later she tried again, while dinner was simmering on the stove. Still no one answered. That night she tried one more time before bed on her cellphone. She waited a long time but nobody picked up. There wasn't even an answering machine or voicemail.

She called again in the morning and again when she got home after school. She went to bed wondering if maybe the woman had left town after all and that night she had a dream.

It came to her like a nightmare but it wasn't a nightmare. The woman was naked. Her body luminous and perfect in every detail. Her red hair afire on her pale shoulders. Smiling. Smirking. Bella was naked as well. Helpless. Her heart racing, both in the dream and in reality. She was trying to resist but the woman was overpowering her. She had Bella's wrists in her hands and Bella could feel the sinful satin of her skin whispering against her own as she tried to squirm away. The cold globes of her breasts. The terrible softness of them. She was trying to scream but she couldn't. Then the woman bit into her throat with her teeth and she woke up.

It was pitch black in the room. She was breathing heavy and her hair was damp and there was a disturbing dampness between her legs as well. She got out of the bed and turned on the light. She was almost expecting the woman to be in the room with her but she wasn't. Her face was streaked with sweat and her body was light and feverish. She wiped her forehead with her arm and then she left her room and went to the bathroom.

Before going back to bed she got a glass of water from the kitchen. She didn't turn on the light. She just stood at the sink in the darkness and drank a full glass before filling it again from the tap. She was wearing nothing but her sleepclothes and the tiles were cold under her socks. She turned around, still drinking, and saw the phone on the wall. She wondered if the woman would be home right now and then she set down the glass and picked up the receiver.

It rang for a long time and Bella listened to it sleepily, her eyes closed, leaning a bare shoulder against the wall. She didn't expect anyone to answer and then someone did.

The ringing stopped and her eyes opened. No one spoke. Bella blinked, listening. She couldn't even hear breathing. Just silence.

"Hello?" she whispered.

"Who is this?"

"Me. Bella."

The woman didn't reply. Bella had recognized her voice. Her eyes darted and she waited for more but the other woman didn't say anything. According to the time on the microwave it was 3:32AM.

"Are you still there?" Bella asked.

"What do you want?"

"Nothing. I was just getting a glass of water and wondering if you're still in town. I wasn't sure if this was still the same number, but I guess it was."

"Isn't it past your bedtime, Ms Swan?"

"Yeah. I had a bad dream. I'm not sure if I'll be able to sleep."

"What was it about?"

"You could probably guess."

A soft snort came from the other end of the phone. "Go back to sleep, Ms Swan," said the other woman. "You have nothing to be afraid of—tonight."

Then she hung up.

Bella stood there looking at the phone in her hand. Then she put it back in the cradle and went upstairs.

She didn't try calling again the next morning or in the afternoon. The dream stayed with her all day. Distracted at school, daydreaming on the way home. She didn't know why her sub-conscious would do that to her. She knew her feelings for the redhead were disturbingly crush-like but it was nothing like _that_.

The next night she lay in bed with her phone in her hands. Her teeth were brushed and she had already said goodnight to her father. After a while she decided to try calling. She listened to it ring for a long time, thinking no one would pick up. Then someone picked up.

Again the woman didn't speak first and Bella could hear only silence. She sat up in the bed and held the phone at her ear.

"Hello?" she said tentatively.

"You again."

"Yeah. Me."

"What do you want this time?"

"Nothing. Just calling."

The woman exhaled into the receiver. As if she was annoyed. Bella swapped the phone to her other ear and brushed her hair back.

"So what's going on?" she asked. "Are you busy right now?"

"Why?"

"No reason. Just thought we could talk."

"Talk."

"Yeah."

"I don't see what we could possibly have to talk about."

"We talked plenty the other night. At the restaurant."

"And what was the point? Nothing."

"Maybe we could just chat then."

"Chat?"

"Sure. Why not?"

"I don't have time for this."

"What else do you have to do that's more important? Kill me?"

The woman didn't reply. Bella smiled and waited a moment and then continued.

"Because it's been days and I haven't even seen you."

"Is that what you want, Ms Swan? To see me?"

"Maybe. Sure. Why not? You're the closest thing I have to a friend."

"You have many friends. I met two of them the other night."

"They don't understand me. They don't really care."

"Neither do I."

"No. But you do understand. Don't you?"

"Perhaps."

"And I understand you as well. So why can't we be friends?"

"Because I'd rather kill you?"

"Would you really? Wouldn't you rather be friends?"

The woman again fell silent. Bella looked at her bedroom door. She'd been speaking softly so her father wouldn't hear and now she got up and closed the door.

"I would," she said.

"Would what?"

"Rather be friends."

"Of course you would. What's your alternative? Death?"

"Maybe. But what's yours?

"My what?"

"Your alternative. Killing me won't achieve anything. It won't bring James back. It won't make you feel better. You know that or else you would've done it already."

Again more silence from the other woman. Bella sat down on her bed anxiously and made her voice more earnest.

"Look, just talk to me, okay? Please?"

"Fine. What would you like to talk about?"

"I don't know. Anything."

"You're the one who called me."

"Alright. Tell me your favorite color."

"Excuse me?"

"Your favorite color. What is it?"

"Red."

"That's what I thought. The color of love."

"And anger."

"And passion."

"And blood."

"Yeah. And blood."

"And what is your favorite color, Ms Swan?"

"Black."

"Black is the color of death."

"Yeah…"

This time it was Bella who fell silent. She tucked some hair behind her ear and it was the woman who spoke next.

"Well? Is there anything else you'd like to talk about?"

"Yeah. But I can't think of anything."

"Such a silly girl, aren't you Ms Swan?"

"I guess."

"Do you know what I'd like to do to you right this moment? If I had you in my hands right now?"

"I could imagine."

"No. You couldn't."

"Tell me then. I'm not afraid."

"You might be."

"I doubt it. I'm curious, anyway. Vampires don't have fangs, right? So it's gotta be different from books and TV. How do you do it?"

The woman didn't reply for a moment. Bella settled down on the bed, laying on her stomach with her feet in the air behind her, like a girl relaxing for a conversation with a boyfriend.

"I mean, you already said you can't leave a crime scene," she said. "So no matter when you did it, you'd have to take me back to your place. Right?"

"That's right."

"So what would you do?"

"What do you mean?"

"How would you kill me? Like, specifically. The first time you came for me, you were going to break my neck, but that's not what you wanted to do at first, was it?"

"No."

"Then what were you going to do?"

"Well, ideally you were supposed to be more resistant. Resistance helps get me in the mood."

"Okay, let's pretend I was trying to fight back. Say you had to drag me into the house. What then?"

"Then I would have to pacify you, wouldn't I?"

"Okay. But how would you do that? Would you just hit me, or…?"

A sigh came over the phone, as if this was all just a bit childish for a woman of her seriousness. But she played along. "Well, at first I would probably just rough you up a little," she said. "Slap you a few times. Make you cry and keep still. Then I would throw you down and kick you while you were on the ground. Break a few ribs, maybe. By then you're resistance ought to be fairly broken."

Bella was listening very closely. The woman seemed to be waiting to see if Bella was scared but Bella wasn't.

"What then?"

"After that I suppose I would drag you upstairs by the hair to one of the bedrooms. Some of the beds are still there with bare mattresses on top and plastic covers over the mattresses. Perfect to catch the blood. At this point you would likely begin begging and blubbering. But I wouldn't listen. Instead I would simply slap you again and begin tearing off your clothes."

"My clothes?"

"Oh, yes. I wouldn't want a single drop of your blood to be wasted on your clothes. I'd rather lick it directly off your skin. I've watched you get dressed through your window. You have a very lovely body, don't you Ms Swan?"

Bella's throat went tight. She could feel a soft throb in it. Again the woman seemed to be waiting to see if Bella was scared and again Bella wasn't.

"What would you do then?" she asked huskily.

"Well, let's see. At this point you would be naked and cowering on the bed. Covering yourself with your hands. Watching as I took off my own clothes as well. Then I would climb into the bed as well and take your head and smash it into the headboard. Just for fun. From there it would simply be a matter of surrendering to my instincts. I would control you with a hand in your hair and the occasional slap to your snivelling face. Then I would begin to feed. Firstly a bite of one of your milky shoulders. Safely away from any artery. The pain for you would be excruciating, but the wound wouldn't even be close to lethal. Just an appetizer. A taste. Something to make you scream. After that I would likely bite your other shoulder as well. And your arm, carefully avoiding the brachial artery. Or as carefully as possible, considering I would be quite frenzied at this point. Deaf to all your begging. Heedless to every tear. You might even try fighting, but that would stop after I snap your arms like twigs. I can almost hear your screams right now. I think you would have a very beautiful scream. But soon the screams will stop as well and you'll do nothing but whimper and shiver in agony as my venom enters your system. Paralysing you. As I bite into your juicy calves. Your succulent thighs. Breaking all your bones as I do so. Staining your skin red and then licking it all up. Licking the blood from your breasts and from around your nipples. From your face and neck. Finally I would gather you up in my arms while you were yet alive. Listening to the dim beat of your heart behind that fractured rack of rib bones. Your eyes would be glazed and staring. Your head lolling on your shoulders. Your skeleton shattered. I would take your chin and force you to look at me and then perhaps I would kiss you lavishly on the mouth, the kiss of death, before finally using my teeth to rip open the carotid artery in your throat and bask in that final fountain of blood as you at last expire in my arms."

The silence that followed was deafening. Bella's face was full of blood and beaming with heat and her heart was slamming so hard she thought the other woman might even be able to hear it.

"So," purred the woman silkily into the phone. "What do you think of that, Ms Swan?"

Bella swallowed the lump in her throat. "I didn't know you were into girls."

No reply. Bella blinked at the phone and swallowed again.

"Are you still there?" she asked.

"Seriously, Ms Swan? _That's_ what you took from that? That I like girls?"

"I'm just surprised, that's all."

The woman scoffed. "It's really nothing surprising," she said. "Most female vampires are into girls, at least to some degree. Female victims are simply tastier. And after all, it's always the beautiful things that are more worth breaking. Crushing a flower is infinitely more fun than stepping on grass."

"That sounds very misogynistic."

"It's a misogynistic world. Just be grateful you were born in a time where such a word has even been invented."

Bella didn't answer. She could still feel the heat in her face and she was still laying there on her stomach. She heard the woman sigh.

"So you truly are not scared?" she asked. "Not even after all I just told you?"

"No. I guess not."

"A pity."

"You sound like you've thought about it a lot."

"I hardly think of anything else. I fantasize of destroying you daily."

"If you want me so badly, why don't you just do it?"

"I wish I knew."

"Does it make me less desirable that I'm not afraid?"

"Somewhat."

"I guess you really wanted to hear me scream."

"Oh, I'd make you scream."

"What if I didn't? What if no matter what you did, I just wouldn't scream?"

"Then I'd do more."

"And if I still didn't scream?"

"Then you would die in silence. Like a fawn."

Bella smiled. It was her first genuine smile in a very long time and she sat up in the bed and chuckled softly into the phone. "Do you know what's really sick?"

"What?"

"It almost sounds kind of hot."

"That's because you don't believe it will actually happen to you."

"Will it?"

The woman didn't reply. Bella smiled again.

"So can I call you again sometime?"

"If you insist."

"Okay. Well. I better get to bed. Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

No one hung up. Bella's heart began to beat faster as the silence grew and then she heard a soft click on the other end.

Bella didn't call the next day. It seemed too soon. The day after was Friday and it rained all day. During classes she took seats by the windows or as close to the windows as she could get, watching the rain gust through the bleak gray courtyards outside, the teacher droning in the background, her notebook blank and untouched on her desk.

She called at lunchtime but nobody answered. It affected her appetite and she didn't eat at all. Angela had been ignoring her more often than usual since their trip to Port Angeles and by now Bella's friends didn't even wait around at their lockers anymore. When classes was over Bella went to her locker alone. It was still raining. Audible even over the din of conversation in the crowded corridor. She had homework but she put her entire bag in her locker and left it there and locked it.

The hallway was busy and there were students at the opposite locker bank and students coming and going from both directions with their bags and books. Bella scanned them, as if maybe she might find Victoria among them. She took her phone out of her pocket, wondering if she should call, if the other woman would pick up. Finally she called. It only rang four times before someone picked up and Bella's heart jolted as she heard Victoria's voice.

"What?"

It wasn't the most encouraging greeting but at least she had spoke first this time. Bella turned away from the crowded corridor and put a finger in her other ear. "Hi," she said. "It's me."

"Yes, I assumed as much. What do you want?"

"Just wanted to say hi. I called before but you didn't pick up. Where've you been? Stalking me?"

"I was shopping."

"What for?"

"New clothes. It's easier than washing my old things."

"Oh. Where did you get the money from?"

"An ATM machine in Seattle that I ripped out of the wall."

"You don't have any secret bank accounts or anything?"

"No."

"The Cullens did. Edward said his dad—the guy pretending to be his dad—had been investing in the stockmarket ever since it was invented. They were, like, billionaires."

"How wonderful for them."

"Wouldn't you like to be a billionaire?"

"Money isn't important to me. My liftestyle is more nomadic. All I've ever required is a mate to share it with."

"So love is the most important thing to you?"

"If that's how you want to put it."

"I'm the same way. I'd rather be with someone I loved than someone who was rich. I guess it was just coincidence that Edward was both."

The woman snorted. Bella smiled. The corridor was beginning to clear out and she leaned back against her locker to keep talking on the phone.

"Did you ever think about settling down somewhere like the Cullens used to?" she asked. "Maybe get married or whatever?"

"No."

"How come?"

"Smart murderers generally like to keep on the move. James and I rarely stayed somewhere for more than a month. Actually, this is the longest I've ever been in one place in a very long time."

"Because of me?"

"No. Because it's where he left me."

"Oh."

"The police could never actually apprehend me, of course, but they could still be extremely bothersome. Over time I've learnt it's best to simply avoid their notice."

"Yeah."

"James was more daring than I was. He cared nothing for police. But that's why we made such a great pair. I was a sheath to his brandished sword. Whenever he threatened to slash too wildly, I was there to contain him."

Bella smirked into the phone and a small snicker escaped her. The woman must've heard it.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing. It's just, you know. Sheath. Sword. There's two ways to take that metaphor."

The woman snorted. Bella could picture her rolling her red eyes and the image made her smile. The corridor was almost empty by now.

"What about blood bags?" she asked.

"What about them?"

"Why couldn't you and James settle down together and just feed from blood bags? Then you could get a house and live together. Get a job. Maybe a pet."

"Because it would've been boring."

"Boring?"

"It was his passion for hunting that attracted me to him. His strength. I'd have no use at all for a man who merely wanted to play human like your boyfriend and the rest of his ridiculous family."

"At least they weren't murderers."

"Yes, I'm sure feeding from animals was just as exciting as can be."

"Maybe not. But there's another way to look at it."

"And what way is that?"

"James fed from humans. Now he's dead."

Silence. Bella was the only person in the corridor. She could see the rain spattering on the windows in the opposite wall and she could hear the sound of it.

"Live by the sword, die by it," she said. "At least vegetarians live longer."

"Not when I find them."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you really think I would leave my mate unavenged? The only reason you've been alive these last few months is because I was waiting to see if your Cullens would return."

"They won't."

"It doesn't matter. I'll find them eventually. Even if it takes hundreds of years. The loss of a mate is something that can never be forgotten."

"How will you find them?"

"Who knows. Perhaps I'll just follow the trail of animal carcasses."

"Well, if you see Edward, tell him to call me."

"He might have trouble speaking without his head."

Bella chuckled to herself. Softly. With no joy in it. She paused for a while, listening to the rain, and then she said: "I still can't believe how he left me. Without even talking to me about it. Like I was nothing to him."

"Maybe that's exactly what you were."

"But he loved me."

"If he loved you he would not have left."

"He left _because_ he loved me."

"Don't be absurd. When you love someone you stay by their side no matter what. James and I were once cornered by a coven outside Colorado. He wanted to distract them so I could escape but I wouldn't leave him. He attacked me to try and drive me off but I still would not go. I fought by his side and we triumphed and I would've stayed even to the death. _That_ is what a mate really is."

Small tears had come into Bella's eyes, wishing she had that kind of love with Edward. She blinked them away. "Maybe Edward will come back for me. Maybe he'll realize."

"Maybe he will. But that wouldn't be a happy ending with me around."

"Yeah, I guess not." Bella wiped her eyes and shook her head to shake it all away. "Anyway, it doesn't matter. He's gone and I'm probably gonna be dead soon. I don't care."

"Yes. Ironic how it's the innocents who suffer most, isn't it?"

"Yeah. It sucks."

"Although in many ways you only have yourself to blame. After all, you knew he was a vampire. What kind of girl would pursue such a relationship?"

"A girl in love?"

"That's an even better question: what kind of girl would fall in love with such a thing? Hm?"

"I don't know. I'm seventeen, give me a break."

"Do you know what I think?"

"What do you think?"

"I think you're just a shallow little girl who was blinded by sparkles."

"Maybe I was. So?"

"You're not going to argue?"

"No. Why should I? It's true. I loved him because he was perfect. If that makes me shallow, fine. I'm shallow. But that doesn't change the fact that I loved him with all my heart and I'd rather die than be without him."

"No. But it does change the context."

"What do you mean?"

"If all you loved about him was his perfection, then what would've stopped you from feeling the same way about any other vampire that happened into your life? All vampires sparkle. All vampires fit your shallow definition of perfect. It could've been Edward or it could've been any of his fake brothers or his pretend father. It could've even been James."

"James?"

"Yes. Now there's an amusing thought, isn't it? Think on that for a moment. If you had never met your Cullens and instead came upon James in the woods in all his perfection, do you not think you might grow to blindly worship him the same way you did Edward?"

"No."

"And how come?"

"Because he'd fucking kill me, that's why."

A chuckle came over the phone. Sort of wistful. "Yes. That's true. But suppose he spared you. Suppose he spared you the same way he spared me and instead treated you with gentleness and kindness. What then?"

"Then I guess it would be you who killed me."

More chuckles, almost laughter. "Yes. I would. I was jealous enough when James wanted to merely kill you. Your scent drove him crazy. If it was only slightly less attractive, I might've been able to convince him to abandon such a reckless hunt. But in truth, perhaps I wanted you too. Girls like you are what we lived for, James and I."

They fell silent for a moment. Bella could hear the rain and her heart.

"You still might have me," she said. "I mean, that's why you're here, right?"

"Yes. But without James…"

"Yeah. I can see how it wouldn't be the same. It's funny because I always thought vampires like you were just mindless monsters. But after talking to you a little bit, I think I'm beginning to understand. I guess it only seems evil to me because I'm human myself. But to you, humans are just food. Like a steak. In the end, if you and James ever got your hands on me, I guess it would've been no different than a romantic dinner for two. Right?"

"Something like that. Only messier."

"Yeah."

"Besides, it's all relative. I wouldn't object to being labelled evil. In general a human life is more precious than a cow's. Most of them, anyway."

"Most of them?"

"Well, there are some people who are worth less than cows. Yourself, for instance."

"You think I'm as worthless as a cow?"

"I'd say that's a fair assessment. Wouldn't you?"

Bella shook her head, smiling. The corridor had been empty for ages and now she began shuffling her feet. "Well, I better go. I'm at school. The whole place is empty."

"I'm aware of your schedule."

"Have you been watching me these last couple days?"

"Only a little."

"Well, I'm going straight home today, so I guess you can take the night off. But why do you bother stalking me, anyway? I mean, it's not like you have to be ultra-careful. You know I'm basically just defenceless."

"What else am I going to do all day?"

"Am I really that interesting to watch?"

"You're interesting to fantasize about. Some days I swear I can almost taste you."

"There's two ways to take that metaphor too, you know."

"Who said it was a metaphor?"

Bella took it as a joke instead, shaking her head again. "Anyway, I better go. Call me the next time you go shopping. I could go with you."

"Hmph."

"It'll save you the trouble of stalking me from a distance. You could keep an eye on me at close range."

"Hmph."

"Well, I better go. Do you have a cellphone?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Because you hardly ever seem to be home. I have to call all day before you finally pick up. Do you have my number on this phone?"

"Yes."

"Well, send me a text. Okay?"

Bella waited for a reply. None came.

"Okay?" she said again.

This time the woman scoffed. "This is ridiculous," she said. "Why are you doing this, Ms Swan?"

"Doing what?"

"Trying to befriend me. Do you think it'll keep me from hurting you? Or is it merely because I'm a vampire and you're fascinated by vampires? If so, think twice. This time you're not going to wind up abandoned. This time you will get yourself killed."

"I don't care."

"You should."

"Well, I don't. I don't care about anything. All I know is that ever since Edward left you're the only person I've wanted to talk to. Maybe you're right. Maybe it's just because you're a vampire. But maybe it's because we have things in common as well. Look, just send me a text, okay? All I want is your number."

Again the woman didn't reply. Again Bella repeated:

"Okay?"

The woman didn't reply for a minute and then there was a soft click and the line went dead.

The empty click seemed to ping in her heart. She looked at the phone in her hand. She put it back to her ear.

"Hello? Victoria?"

Nothing. Only the rain.

Bella put the phone back in her pocket and began to trudge down the corridor. The parking lot was completely empty by the time she got there and she stepped out into the rain without a slicker or an umbrella. Her hair was wet in seconds. Her truck sat there in its space, red, wet, hulking in the downpour. She didn't know why the other woman had just hung up like that. She thought they were making progress. Bella opened the door and got into the truck and that's when she felt her phone vibrate in her pocket.

She pulled the door shut again and got her phone out. It was a text and her heart began beating faster than the drum of rain on the metal roof as she read it.

**I'm going to kill you so slowly.**

Bella smiled. She didn't know if the threat was literal or maybe even flirtatious but she didn't care. She typed in a reply and sent it.

**Just let me know when you want me to come over. ;)**

Then she turned the key, grinning, and pulled out into the road and the rain.

—

That night Victoria found herself perched on the rooftop of the house next door to Bella's. Crouched there in her hoody like a gargoyle or an enormous bat. In her hands she held her phone and she was staring at the screen. At the reply the girl had sent that afternoon. Victoria hadn't texted back. Instead she came here. She had been here for hours and after a while she noticed movement in the girl's window. She looked up from the phone. In that yellow square of light she saw the girl cross the room and then cross back again. Then she turned and pulled off her top. Underneath she was wearing a bra and then she took that off too. Her breasts were full for her age and they swayed softly with her movements. So soft and warm looking. Victoria's mouth salivated with venom and she almost crushed the phone in her hand. She watched as the girl then slipped on a tanktop for bed before bending below the window frame to change her bottoms as well. Then she shrugged on her robe and left the room. Victoria closed her dark red eyes and crouched there in the darkness as still as a statue. Then she opened them and continued watching the empty room until the girl would come back.

—


	4. Chapter 4

—

Chapter 4:

—

The next morning Bella had Cheerio's for breakfast and texted Victoria that she was having Cheerio's for breakfast. Victoria didn't reply.

At school she waited until she was bored in math class before texting again to say that she was bored in math class. Victoria again didn't reply. Bella then asked her for the answers to some of the equations in her textbook, thinking that a vampire's mind must be as superpowered as it's body. She didn't expect a reply to this either and she was excited when one actually came through. It said:

**Leave me alone.**

Bella sighed and put the phone down on her desk. The teacher noticed and cleared her throat loudly as a warning against texting in class. Bella refocused on her textbook for about ten minutes and then she took up her phone again.

**So what are you doing right now?** she asked in a text.

A couple minutes later came a reply. **Nothing.**

**Where are you then?**

**Home.**

**Doing what?**

**Laying down.**

**Thinking about?**

**You.**

Bella smiled, although she knew such thoughts were likely to be violent ones. She glanced discreetly at the teacher—who was concentrating on some papers at her desk—and back at the phone.

**Sounds boring.**

**As boring as school?**

**Good point.**

Bella waited for a reply but none came. Not in one minute or two or three. She looked at the clock on the wall. Next period was final period. She took up her phone again.

**If you're bored, want me to come over after school?**

She hesitated a second, wondering if the woman might get the wrong idea from that, and then quickly added:

**To hang out?**

The reply didn't come right away. The teacher rose from her desk to dismiss the class and soon everyone else rose as well to gather their books. Bella didn't check her phone again until she was out in the corridor and the reply gave her a little flutter.

**If you want.**

She smiled and typed:

**Okay.**

The final class was social studies and all Bella had to do was sit through a lecture before she was free to go. She shoved her bag and books into her locker and once again left it all there. Homework seemed like such a stupid thing to do when you might not even live to graduation.

The roads were still wet from an earlier shower but the sky had cleared. Bella drove all the way out to the Cullen house and got out of the truck with a peculiar kind of anxiety in her stomach, approaching the front door like a woman on a tightrope, knowing that each step could be her last and each step more thrilling than the one before it. She knocked on the door with the brass knocker. A bird sang in the woods. Bella looked toward the sound, toward the clear blue sky that hung over the trees, and then the door opened.

Victoria was wearing no hoody this time and her red hair was in full flame around her head. It was the first time Bella had seen her in a week and her beauty was as startling as ever. She didn't look particularly pleased to see Bella and Bella gave her a tentative smile.

"Hi," she said.

Victoria opened the door further for her to come in, watching her with her red eyes. Bella stepped in and Victoria closed the door behind her.

It was cold in the house with no heating and she kept her jacket wrapped around her tightly. She leaned and looked into the living room. "I guess this is the first time I've actually been invited here," she said. "Did you know I've snuck in before?"

"Yes."

"I guess you smelled my scent."

"Something like that."

"Bet you didn't know I could be a stalker too, huh?"

The woman grunted. Kind of like a scoff. Then she turned and started up the stairs.

Bella followed her, one hand on the banister. Victoria was several steps above her and she was wearing hipster jeans and her hips swayed left and right with each step and Bella's eyes fluttered over her back pockets before fluttering away again.

"So how long you think you can stay in this place?" she asked, looking around at everything else. Barren walls. No lights on.

"Not much longer," Victoria said. "I have no idea how much time is left on the lease, but it can't be too much more. I should already be cleaned up and moved out by now."

"How come you're not?"

"Because I can't leave you alive."

"You could if you wanted."

Again she grunted noncommittally. She had led Bella into her bedroom and the first thing Bella noticed was that the kerosene cans were gone.

Victoria had barely looked over her shoulder to see if the girl was following and now she sat on the bed and laid down with an arm over her eyes.

"So is this what you do all day?" Bella asked.

"More or less."

"You should probably get an iPod or something."

"Why are you here, Ms Swan?"

Bella shrugged, standing just within the door. "No reason. Just thought we could hang out."

"Hang out."

"Sure. Why not?"

Victoria snorted and lifted her arm from her eyes and gestured airily with the hand at the end of it. "Then by all means," she said. "Hang."

Bella looked at her for a moment. The bed had absolutely nothing on it but a mattress, a pillow, and the woman herself. Bella went over and sat on the edge of the mattress. Victoria didn't move. Bella looked at her some more and then looked around the room.

"I probably should've bought some homework or something," she said. "I'm already over a week behind. If I don't catch up, I might even fail."

"I wouldn't think that far ahead."

"Why? Because I might be dead by then?"

"You might be."

She still had her forearm over her eyes. Talking up to the ceiling as if Bella wasn't even there. It was beginning to make Bella feel annoyed and unwelcome. She snorted at the woman's last comment. "You think I'm stupid for being here, but I'm not," she said. "I know exactly how dangerous you are. It's not that I've convinced myself you won't do it, it's just that I don't care."

"You think awareness of your stupidity somehow makes it less stupid?"

"Yes. I do."

A smirk formed on Victoria's mouth. She still hadn't even looked at Bella and now Bella's face darkened.

"You know, there's no need to be such a bitch," she said.

Silence for a minute. Then the arm moved and the red eyes opened and the woman propped up on an elbow to look at Bella.

"Excuse me?"

Bella frowned at her. "I came here because I like you. Simple as that. I don't judge you for what you are or what you want to do to me. I even understand. But if you're not gonna do anything but make fun of me and call me stupid, then maybe I should just go."

She stood up and went to the door. She was half expecting the woman to call her back and apologize. But she didn't. Bella hesitated and turned back.

"Well? Do you want me to go or not?"

Victoria sighed and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She rose. There was a silky menace to her movements that made Bella tense up.

"I think you have the wrong impression of me, Ms Swan," Victoria said. "Let me help you understand."

"Okay," Bella said cautiously, and then the woman took her head and bashed it into the doorframe.

Just once. Just to make a point. Bella's skull bounced off the wood and she made no sound at all aside from the muted thud. She put a hand in her hair and shrank back from her assailant. Victoria smiled.

"Do you understand now?"

Bella didn't answer. She only glared through the hair that had fallen over her face. This made Victoria's smile widen.

"You think you can save your life by befriending me," she said. "But you can't. All you're doing is making yourself an even more desirable victim. In any case, I warned you that nothing gets me in the mood like resistance. Call me a bitch one more time and I might just have to kill you where you stand."

"_Bitch_," Bella spat.

The woman paused in the act of sitting on the bed. Then she straightened.

"What did you say?"

"I called you a bitch," Bella said again, clutching the lump that had already formed in her hair. "And a stupid bitch, because you're the one who doesn't understand. Get it through your head, Victoria. I don't care about dying. I want to. One way or another I'm outta here pretty soon anyway. You can kill me or you can go away and I'll kill myself, but either way, it's not me who's confused._ You're_ the one who doesn't know what she wants. You talk about killing me, but so far you haven't done jack shit but watch me through my bedroom window like a pathetic—"

Victoria's hand shot out and grasped Bella's throat. Bella slammed back against the wall, her words choked off. The woman's eyes had gone dark red, the color of dried blood, and she glared at Bella with them.

"Is this what you want?"

Bella tried to speak but couldn't. She couldn't even breathe. The woman's hand tightened and lifted her off her feet. Bella gripped that cold wrist and kicked at the air with her boots. Her face was going blue. Victoria raised her up even higher.

"Is this what you want, Ms Swan?" she hissed softly. "Is it?"

Bella's vision was darkening around the edges. She was dying and in that moment she realized—

But then the hand loosened and she collapsed onto the floor, gagging and coughing. Victoria stepped back disdainfully, as if she was something foul there. Bella held her throat and swallowed painfully and looked up with eyes that were wet and furious.

"Bitch," she said hoarsely.

Victoria looked at her for a moment. Then she bobbed down to look at her eyelevel. She let her eyes wander over Bella's face as Bella continued to cough and suck down breaths and then she reached and took a handful of Bella's hair. Bella looked at her defiantly. Victoria returned her gaze, her eyes like smouldering red embers, and then she let go of the girl roughly and rose and turned away.

"I think it's time for you to leave, Ms Swan," she said.

Bella got up, coughing, and ran out of the room.

By the time Bella got home it was almost dark and she could see her dad's police car in the driveway. Bella pulled in behind it and held her phone in her lap while the sun sank downstreet. She stared at the screen but she couldn't think of anything to text that would smooth over how disappointed and hurt she was. She couldn't understand why the woman was so stubborn and determined to be difficult. If she had loved her mate as much as she claimed then obviously she was capable of feeling and caring about another person. Why couldn't she care about Bella?

Her dad was watching TV when she came in. It sounded like football. Bella went to say hi but he did a doubletake at her and rose from the couch.

"Jesus, Bells, what happened to your neck?"

Bella was actually confused for a moment. "What do you mean?"

"It's all bruised."

"It is?"

Bella touched it. She couldn't feel the bruises but her throat was still very sore. Her father took away her hands while the football game continued in the background.

"Let me see that," he said.

Bella let him look, worried about how she was going to explain it.

"Jesus," he whispered. "Did someone hurt you, Bella?"

"No."

"Bella, it's okay, you can tell me. These are strangulation bruises. I can see the indent of the fingers. What happened?"

Bella shrugged away from him and rubbed her throat as if to wipe away the bruises. "Nothing happened, dad. I don't even know what you're talking about."

"Where have you been all afternoon?"

"Nowhere."

"Bella—"

He was reaching to take Bella's hands away from her neck but Bella shied away and went past him and upstairs. He followed her into the bathroom while she looked at herself in the mirror. On both sides of her throat were ugly purple splotches in her pale skin.

"Bella, this is serious," he was saying. "If someone hurt you, you have to tell me. Not just as your father, but as the police chief too."

"Nothing happened, dad. Seriously, I have no idea how the bruises got there. Maybe I was just leaning on it wrong."

"Why are you lying to me, Bells?"

"I'm not lying."

"Just tell me what happened, sweetie. It's alright."

He put his hands on her shoulders as if she needed to be calmed. But it wasn't the bruises that alarmed her. All she was worried about was what to tell him and she knew there was no way to lie around it.

"A girl did it," she said after a while. "But it's okay, we were just playing around."

"What do you mean playing around? Did it happen at school?"

"No, it was after school. We were just hanging out and you know. She was teasing me and stuff and we got into a bit of a fight. My skin bruises easily, it's really no big deal."

"This looks like she was trying to kill you, Bella."

"She wasn't. We were just playing around."

He was frowning, either not really believing her or not liking it even if he did. "Who is she?"

"Her name's Victoria."

"Victoria who?"

Bella shook her head helplessly. She didn't know her last name and she couldn't risk her dad trying to find out about her and maybe this was the same woman who was going to come kill her soon and she was getting very upset by now.

"Dad, please just drop it, okay? You're embarrassing me. It's no big deal, alright?"

His frown loosened up a bit but it didn't go away. He looked around the bathroom and back at Bella. "Are you sure you're alright, Bella?"

"I'm fine."

"You would tell me the truth, wouldn't you?"

"Of course I would."

He looked at her for a moment. His concern obviously went a lot deeper than the bruises. Bella felt her face heat with shame. The one regret she was going to leave behind when she was gone was how much she was going to hurt her father.

"Anyway, I better get started on dinner," she said. "Don't worry about me, alright?"

Then she pushed past him and went downstairs.

She was a long time cooking and sullen through dinner and even more sullen as she brooded upstairs with her phone on the desk. She had her notebook open and the page was filled with a messy scrawl of poetry in black ink. Her throat was still sore when she swallowed. Dinner had been difficult to eat but she never said anything to her father. She kept one eye on the phone and she kept checking it for texts every few minutes. Nothing so far. She hated how this felt. Hated being so meaningless. Hated being mad at Victoria. Because being mad at her shifted the dynamic against her will and that made her uncomfortable.

Bella stared at the phone, willing it to ring. Then she picked up and held it. But if she called herself it would defeat the purpose so she put it back again.

She tried to focus on her poetry but it was too hard to concentrate. It was getting late. She kept looking at the time on the computer and the time on her phone and wondering if Victoria was busy. She didn't know if she would be able to sleep without this settled. All she wanted was a phone call. Not even to apologize. Just to let her know that Victoria wanted to call. Wanted to be friends. That Bella's feelings were important to her in some small way. That Bella wasn't insane for even having these feelings.

It was just past eleven o'clock when her father tapped on the door and looked in.

"Hey, Bells," he said. "It's getting pretty late. Shouldn't you be getting to bed?"

Bella closed the notebook even though he couldn't see anything from there. "Yeah, I was just finishing up something."

He nodded and then nodded at the notebook with a smile. "When you gonna let me read some of those things?"

Bella looked down at the notebook. There were a few of them that she was quite proud of and she would've loved to show her father if the subject of them was anything other than suicide. So instead she just shrugged away the question.

"You wouldn't like them," she said.

"I've read poetry before, you know."

"You have?"

"Sure. I did go to school, Bells."

Bella chuckled and at that moment her phone started vibrating on her desk. Her chuckles died instantly and she seized the phone to look at the screen. If it was Ange or Jess she would've been crushed, but it wasn't. It was Victoria.

Bella's head whipped up to her father.

"I'll get to bed in a minute, dad, I just have to…"

He nodded and backed out politely, closing the door partway to give her some privacy. Bella answered the phone and put it to her ear.

"What?"

Her voice had come out more brusque than she thought it would've. She didn't know what to expect from the other woman but her tone came over the phone breezy and almost haughty.

"Now, now, Ms Swan," she said. "Is that any way to greet your new bestie?"

"Bestie?"

"That's what your determined to make me, is it not?"

"Do you often choke your besties?"

"I would often like to."

Bella snorted, only somewhat bitterly. She waited to see if the other woman say more. She didn't. Bella frowned and exhaled through her nose. "Well? Are you going to apologize?"

"Not at all."

"Then you're still a bitch. And thanks for the bruises, by the way."

"What bruises?"

"On my neck. My dad completely freaked."

"Shit. What did you tell him?"

"That we were just playing around."

"Did he believe you?"

"Yeah. He was right, though. I should be more careful about you. I mean, it's pretty obvious you don't care about me the same way I care about you. When I came over, all I wanted to do was hang out and keep you company a little bit because I know how lonely you probably are. But you, all you wanted to do was piss me off till I left. I shouldn't even be talking to you right now."

"Then why are you?"

Bella didn't answer. The answer was pretty obvious anyway. She sat there with the phone at her ear and after a while she heard Victoria sigh.

"Fine," Victoria said. "I apologize for my behaviour earlier."

"You do?"

"Yes. But at the same time I don't want you to have any illusions about me, Ms Swan. I'm not a good person and I'm certainly not your friend. I'm your predator. Do you understand that?"

"Yes, I do. Fine. And I don't want you to have any illusions about me either. So you be my predator and I'll be your victim. I'll even let you choke me again if you want. You don't even have to let go next time. I just don't want you to be a bitch about it, that's all."

Victoria was silent. Bella waited a minute and said:

"Okay?"

Victoria heaved another sigh on the other end of the phone. "Well, I suppose you are more than simply a meal," she said. "More like a fine dessert. Perhaps you deserve a sort of deference. I've certainly savoured you long enough."

Bella closed her eyes for a moment and nodded her head. The repair of the relationship came as a great relief to her. "Thank you," she said.

"Do you really want to be a nice and docile victim, Ms Swan?"

"Sure."

"Then leave your bedroom window unlocked from now on. I tire of creeping through the bushes."

Then she hung up.

Bella smiled at the phone, the most peculiar feeling in her chest. The she rose from the desk and opened the window. She leaned out to look over the backyard but there was nothing there. The dark shape of the toolshed. Dead grass. A swingset from her childhood. The cold moved over her body and made her shiver and she leaned back into her room and closed the window. It was an old house and the window had an old lock, just a small brass latch in the chipped paint of the window frame. Edward had always wanted her to leave it open too so that he could fill the night hours by watching her sleep. Is that what Victoria wanted to do as well? Bella left it unlocked and went to the bathroom.

She lay awake a long time that night, listening for any sound that might be the window opening. There was no wind outside and her father was already in bed. She listened, but there was nothing in her room but darkness and dead silence. She figured maybe the woman was waiting for her to go to sleep and after a while she slept and shortly after she woke again. She thought she had heard something. She was facing the wall and now she rolled to the other side and blinked sleepily into the blackness. Was Victoria there? Standing over her bed? Watching her? Bella was tempted to get up and turn the light on to see but she was too tired and in the end she just fell back asleep.

Over the next few days Bella drove to Victoria's house every afternoon. She could never stay long since she had to get back to make dinner but she was at the point where some part of her just needed to see her. To look at her wild orange hair. Her pale face. To hear her voice. Her sardonic teasing and menacing flirting. They would sit in Victoria's room upstairs and they would chat about things. Bella would tell her about school or about her dad. About her mom back in Phoenix and now in Florida. About Edward. In talking about him she seemed to come to a new understanding of her feelings for him and she began to realize that maybe she had never truly loved him at all but had only been forcing herself to love him in order to be a part of his life. Vampire life. Victoria would sit against the headboard with a knee propped up and offer a dry commentary like a sarcastic psychiatrist. She rarely spoke about herself and she kept a small distance from the other girl. As if she were constantly under a temptation to lash out on her. She watched her with her slanted feline eyes and occasionally their eyes would catch. The redness of them would cause Bella's heart to skip a beat and Bella would quickly look away.

Then it was the weekend and she didn't see her. First on Saturday, then on Sunday. Her dad was home most of the time. The bruises on her neck had faded to yellow smudges but he still eyed them with disapproval. Bella texted Victoria often but things were still somewhat strained between them, neither wholly clear on what they wanted from the other. Bella had thought she only wanted to be friends but she wasn't so sure anymore. Her feelings had become very intense. It didn't feel like friendship. It felt like she wanted to be with her. Like romantically. But she was positive she wasn't a lesbian so she tried not to think about it.

On Monday she again drove to Victoria's house after school. Victoria met her outside and they spent some time in the garden. Walking. Chatting. It was a bleak afternoon and no sun and Bella kept glancing at Victoria's face and wondering how beautiful she would be if the sun did come out. Eventually Bella drove home and went to bed and the next day she seemed to sit through school for the sole purpose of going to see Victoria afterward. Victoria again was waiting outside for her and Bella smiled as she got out the truck.

"Hey," she said.

It was a windy day and Victoria was about to reply when a gust of wind came along and blew Bella's hair over her shoulder and carried a gust of her scent to Victoria's nose. Bella fixed her hair and tucked it behind her ears and when she looked up she saw that Victoria's eyes had darkened.

"You okay?" she asked.

Victoria stared at her darkly and came over. Bella shrank back against the truck. Victoria put a hand on the roof of the cab, as if to corner the girl in, and stared directly down at her with those near black eyes. Another gust of wind came and rustled their hair, both of them, Victoria's orange locks flaring like flames, Bella's darker tresses trembling like a shadow. Bella's heart was throbbing and she was afraid the other woman would kiss her or worse but all Victoria did was lean to her neck and inhale and step back again.

"Come on," she said. "We'd better go inside."

Bella gulped the lump in her throat. Then she followed Victoria into the house.

Over the next few days she became less positive that she wasn't a lesbian. It even made a strange kind of sense. Edward had been the only boy she had ever been attracted to and she wasn't sure how genuine that attraction had been anymore. She had always been more breathtaken by Rosalie and Alice, but even that had been nothing compared to what she felt for Victoria. With Victoria she felt things she had never felt before. Intense didn't even describe it. It was an attraction she felt in her bones, as if her marrow itself were magnetized to the other woman. And not just a woman. A vampire. An evil one. Who fed from humans and wanted to feed from her as well. It was wrong in every way imaginable, unnatural even. And yet entirely irresistible.

That night she had another dream in which the woman came to her naked and in the morning her body felt strange in the shower. The next night she called the images back willingly, picturing those breasts and buttocks behind her closed eyelids, that pure white skin, imagining it all in her arms. The night after that she touched herself briefly before forcing herself to stop. It was wrong and it made her queasy in her stomach to feel this way. In the darkness she would listen for any sound of the window opening but so far she hadn't heard it open even once since she had left it unlocked. She was growing frustrated by the other woman's reticence. So many times she simply wanted Victoria to just grab her and take her and do whatever she wanted to her. It would make everything so much simpler.

The weather had been clearing up for a while and by the next week the sun came out. It was a Thursday afternoon, and luckily very windless, and Bella was able to persuade Victoria to take a stroll with her in the woods outside the house. There was a trail that led to an overlook and it was a route she had often taken with Edward just to see him sparkle. But Edward sparkled nothing like Victoria did. Bella couldn't take her eyes off her. They were hiking along the trail, passing through sunlight and shadows of tress, and every time those sunrays glinted off Victoria's supernatural skin Bella would glance and glance again.

Eventually they came out onto the overlook where there were no trees and no shadows. There was a wooden fence at the edge of the bluff and beyond that was an endless blue sky over the forest below. Bella paused and Victoria went on a few steps before turning back. The sun beamed down onto her left side and the cheek there was shimmering with a brightness that was almost too brilliant to look at. Her orange hair was bright like fire and her eyes were pale red, almost pink, and there was something of a smirk on her lips at the wonder in the other girl's expression. She was wearing a heavy navyblue coat and she had it wrapped around her and fastened with a belt. Bella eyes wandered over her face and a half chuckle came out of her.

"Wow," she whispered. "You look incredible."

Victoria nodded, as if she entirely agreed, and gave a prim toss of her hair. "Yes, although I must admit, the novelty does wear off eventually. It can be rather frustrating to cover up so much when one needs to go out during the day. Would you like to see the rest?"

"The rest of what?"

"Me."

"What do you mean?"

Bella honestly had no idea. Victoria smirked and undid the belt on her coat. Then she took the coat off and let it fall to the grass. Underneath she was wearing jeans and a shirt and now she lifted the shirt over her head and dropped that also.

Bella realized what she was doing and began to panic all over. Already the other woman was almost topless. Her torso was covered by nothing but a crimson colored bra and the sun was sparkling off her shoulders and off the pale hills of her cleavage.

"W-what are you doing?" Bella stuttered.

"Relax, Ms Swan," Victoria said with a smirk as she unbuttoned her jeans. "We're both girls here, aren't we?"

Bella didn't know what that meant. Yes, they were both girls, but…

Victoria's smirk widened at how the girl's mouth dropped open and now she unzipped her jeans while kicking off her boots. She then took the jeans off and her socks, exposing her long white legs to the glorious rays of the sun, before reaching behind her back for her bra. Bella didn't believe she was actually going to do it but she did. The bra came loose, her breasts bounced free. They were huge and white and even more perfect then in her dreams. The left one shimmered like a mirage in the full brunt of the sunlight and the right one sparkled with an extra twinkle on the nipple as if the nipple were made of diamond. Bella's throat had closed over and now Victoria was lowering her panties. They were red as well, crimson red, and she kicked them away before smiling and sighing and fluffing out her hair as if to relax. She then turned and posed for the sunlight to shimmer across her back and her buttocks and the backs of her legs before turning again and tilting a hip and planting a hand on it, smirking at the paralysed girl there with all the confidence and sexiness of Venus herself.

"Well?" she said. "Are you impressed?"

Bella stared at her. Her breathing had gone shallow and her body was going wild and she was desperately trying to hide it. She could feel herself throbbing and after a while she swallowed.

"Wow," she said.

Victoria examined her reaction, not in the least uneasy herself, and then she smiled. "In certain ancient mythologies, it was sightings of vampires that inspired the creation of gods," she said. "Unfortunately, I'm much too young to have inspired any myself."

"You look like a goddess to me."

"Why, thank you."

Bella chuckled awkwardly, trying to be casual. She was even trying to look away but she couldn't do it. Her eyes roamed all up and down that lustrous form, from her legs to her midriff to the peaks of her breasts, until her eyes came up and met Victoria's. Victoria smiled and made a twirling motion with her finger.

"Turn around," she said.

"Why?"

"So I can get changed again."

Bella nodded and tore her eyes away and turned around. Behind her Victoria stepped into her panties and then into her jeans. She smirked at the back of Bella's head. Bella stared out into the trees with no thoughts in her head at all and when she turned back Victoria was fully dressed again.

They walked back to the house and reached the truck just as the sun was beginning to set. Bella was going to be late home but she didn't really care. Victoria said goodbye to her that afternoon with a wink and a particularly flirty demeanor and then stood in the driveway until the truck was out of sight. Bella took a deep breath behind the wheel and tried to focus on driving straight. Her hands were trembly and her foot was weak on the pedal. Her mouth was dry and she was having a hard time swallowing. Her limbs were weird. Nothing seemed right. She glanced at the rearview and bit her lip. Then she took another deep breath and focused on the road.

By the time she got home she had decided that she was, in fact, a lesbian. Or at the very least she was completely lezzy for Victoria. She couldn't deny it anymore. It was just too powerful. Yet even after she went to bed that night her hand was only in her panties for less than a minute before she fought it all back with a small sound of frustration. Whatever these feelings were, she just wasn't ready to give in to them. She listened again that night for any sound of the window and while she was listening she began to fantasize in her mind of Victoria crawling through it and crawling into the bed and kissing her and touching her down there between her legs. Her hand had snuck into her panties again but she took it out and forced herself to go to sleep.

The next day was Friday and there was still some sun. Victoria didn't take her clothes off again but they did spend the afternoon outside. They went around the back and startled a small group of birds off the lawn that rose into the sky and disappeared into the sun. Bella watched them, shielding her eyes with a hand, and then looked at Victoria. She had been watching them as well and her face was lifted into the sun and shimmering like something so beautiful it struggled to maintain a physical form. Bella's heart clenched and she looked away.

The next day was Saturday and they decided to go shopping together. Bella was thrilled at how close they had become over these last two weeks and she was even more thrilled at how it was Victoria who suggested the shopping trip. Victoria was almost out of clean clothes again and Bella needed a few things herself. They browsed one of the stores in town and Victoria was very efficient in her purchases. Bella's own funds weren't quite so unlimited and so she took her time. Taking a top from the discount rack and holding it to her chest. They were the only two people in the store. Bella was talking about the top and how much she liked it and Victoria tapped her foot impatiently. Then Bella put it back and Victoria groaned. Bella chuckled at her.

"Sheesh," she said, browsing the rack all over again. "You're worse than shopping with a guy."

"Hmph."

"But you gotta admit, it's better than stalking me from a distance, right?"

"Yes, although far more annoying."

Bella giggled. It was a habit she'd only picked up lately.

"Are you going to buy anything or not?" Victoria asked.

"What's the matter, you don't like shopping?"

"Not particularly."

"Why not?"

"Fashion changes too often to bother keeping up with. I'm not concerned much with such superficialities."

"I love shopping. I've always…"

Bella trailed off. She had her hands in the rack of tops and a puzzled frown came over her face before she resumed browsing.

"Actually, I've always hated shopping too," she said. "Back in Phoenix I always got my mom to buy my clothes. Dunno why I'm having so much fun now. Maybe it's just because I'm with you."

A subtle signal. Or perhaps not so subtle. Bella glanced at her to get her reaction but Victoria only grunted. Yet there was something in her eyes. Something hard and almost awkward. Bella took three tops off the rack, all of them black, and looked toward the rear of the store. Then she grabbed a pair of jeans as well.

"I'm gonna go try these on," she said. Then she turned back to Victoria. She knew what she was about to say and her heart started racing before she even said it. She drifted backwards a couple steps, toward the change rooms, and said: "You coming? Can't stalk me properly from out here, can you?"

Bella continued walking backwards, almost cockily, and she had only taken two steps before Victoria fell in beside her.

The change rooms were in the back of the store, three little cubicles with only curtains as doors. All three were empty and Bella entered the one at the end and Victoria closed the curtain for them. The cubicle contained nothing but a chair and a mirror. Bella put the tops on the chairs. It wasn't uncommon to try on clothes with a friend but very rarely was that friend a ravenous redheaded vampire. Victoria stood aside, watching her with her arms folded. Bella began to undress shyly. First her top. Pulling it up over her head and gathering up her hair for it all to cascade down again. She was facing the mirror and she could see Victoria behind her and she could almost feel those red eyes burning across her back. She was kicking off her boots and now she lowered her pants and kicked them off too. She was wearing nothing but her socks and underwear and her body had begun to throb all over. Victoria's eyes lifted in the mirror until she met Bella's. Bella was so frozen by them that she didn't even reach for any of the clothes to try on. Instead she turned around and let those hot red eyes roam over her front as well. Over her plain white bra and plain white panties. Her bare legs. She swallowed and tried to chuckle and she said:

"I guess my body is nothing compared to yours, huh?"

Victoria lifted her eyes. They were a dark scarlet color.

"No," she said. "But it has other valuable qualities."

"Like what?"

"Softness. Breakability."

Victoria lifted a hand and brushed the backs of her knuckles against Bella's bare shoulder. Bella shivered visibly. The knuckles were like icecubes on her hot skin.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

Victoria opened her hand and caressed the shoulder in her palm. It was exactly what Bella wanted but Bella panicked and shrugged away.

"I said you could watch me, not touch me," she said, chuckling nervously.

Victoria smirked and looked at the girl trembling there in her underwear. "Do you honestly think I require your permission for anything I want to do to you?"

"Yes."

"Think again."

"Well, what are you going to do? Rape me?"

The taunt was perhaps too much. The woman moved in a flash and suddenly her hand was buried in Bella's hair. All Bella had seen was a blur of red. She might've screamed from the pain but Victoria shoved her forehead into Bella's to press them together. The blow was like a headbutt. It almost knocked her unconscious. She went dizzy and she might've collapsed if not for the hand in her hair. When her eyes opened, they were looking directly into Victoria's—burning pools of reddish-black hunger.

"You have no idea how you torment me," she hissed.

Bella blinked at her stupidly. Her lips were really close and in her daze all she wanted to do was kiss her. Victoria growled and then she threw the girl down and spun around and burst out through the curtain.

Bella was sitting in the floor. It had all happened so fast. She touched her head. There was already a little lump forming but luckily it was above the hairline where her dad wouldn't notice. She dropped her hand into her lap and sat there, blinking. There was dampness in her panties and a deep throb in her chest like a drum. After a while she struggled to her feet. She was still a little dizzy and she didn't bother trying anything on. She found her phone as she was putting her pants back on and she texted Victoria to ask if she was okay. There wasn't an immediate reply and then she got dressed and went home.

She didn't hear back till after dinner when she was sitting in the livingroom with her father. She was curled up on the couch with a book in her hands and the phone in her lap and when the phone vibrated it vibrated close enough to her oversensitive lowerarea to make her jump.

It was a text from Victoria and only one word:

**Sorry.**

Bella smiled at it. A warm feeling came into her chest. The football game was droning in the background and her father looked at her curiously but she ignored him to reply.

**You okay?**

**Yes.**

**Where are you?**

There was a long pause before the reply. Then the phone said:

**Outside your house. Under your window.**

Bella stared at the screen. It was the first time Victoria had ever admitted to being at Bella's house. Bella turned and looked behind the couch, as if she might be right there in the livingroom. Her father smiled at her.

"It's nice to see you on the phone more often lately," he said.

Bella looked at him in confusion. "Aren't parents supposed to hate it when their kids are on the phone all the time?"

"Well, maybe. But you've been pretty withdrawn these last few months. It's good to see you spending more time with your friends."

Bella held the phone and smiled. But it was a smile tinged with rue because there was nothing good about the friend she had been spending time with and she couldn't even imagine her father's reaction if he knew she was hanging out with a murderer, a stalker, and a potential lesbian love interest.

Bella rose from the couch. Her father looked up.

"I'll be back in a minute," she said. "I just have to…"

A touchdown was scored in the game and Bella used the distraction to slip away.

She went outside through the screendoor in the kitchen and wrapped her robe around herself in the cold. She tiptoed in her socks around to the side of the house to where her bedroom was and she looked up at her window and looked down at the flower bed below. Victoria was sitting there in the dirt. No hoody. Her hair dark red in the dim light from the porch. Sitting in that twisted bramble of dead flower bushes like a witch in a swamp.

"Hey," Bella whispered. "You okay?"

Victoria didn't reply. It was too dark to see her eyes but somehow Bella could tell she was on a knife-edge of restraint. Something had snapped inside her this afternoon in the change room. Something that made her more dangerous—and attractive—than ever.

Bella looked toward the house and turned back to that dark shape under her window.

"You don't have to stay out here all night," she said. "My bedroom window is unlocked. You don't have to wait till I'm asleep. You can go up now and wait for me if you want. Maybe we should talk. There's probably some things we need to talk about. What do you think?"

No answer. She hadn't moved an inch since Bella had laid eyes on her.

"Victoria," Bella whispered. "Are you alright?"

A cold breeze blew. It came from behind Bella and moved through her robe and went on to wash up against Victoria. Bella tightened her robe. Victoria lowered her head. Bella could see her shaking in the darkness, almost as if she were cold.

"I have to get back inside," Bella said. "Will you wait for me in my room?"

Still no answer. Bella was pained but she didn't want to continue bothering her so she hurried back inside.

She went back to the livingroom for a few minutes so her dad wouldn't get suspicious and then she went upstairs to her room. Victoria wasn't there but Bella hadn't expected her to be. She went to the window but she didn't open it. It was up to Victoria if she wanted to come in or not. Bella hoped she would. They really did need to talk. Every time she thought she was comfortable with this relationship something changed. What she really needed to know was what Victoria wanted. Then she would be able to decide how she felt.

It got late and still no one appeared in the window. Bella went to say goodnight to her dad and then went to the bathroom and brushed her teeth. She took her time, hoping when she came back to her room the woman would be there. She wasn't.

Bella sighed and turned off the light and got into bed. Maybe now that her light was off Victoria would come. Bella lay there for a very long time. She could hear the TV downstairs. Then the TV turned off. A little while later she heard her father go to bed. It would be past midnight by now. The wind outside was mostly silent. Every now and then she could hear a soft rustle. Sometimes she thought it was the window but it was the only the tree outside. She was determined to wait until Victoria appeared this time and in order to keep herself awake she began to fantasize about her. Eyes closed with her face half buried in her pillow. Thinking back to what happened in the change room and imagining a different scenario. A scenario where Victoria ripped the bra directly off Bella's chest. Just ripped it. And then groped her chest while forcing kisses on her. Bella breathed in the darkness and let one of her hands slither inside her top. She touched one of her nipples. It was sensitive and it grew hard very quickly. In the fantasy that same breast was engulfed in Victoria's hand and Bella wasn't resisting at all. She took the other woman's tongue in her mouth and—

_Click._

Bella froze. Was that the window?

She had been distracted and she wasn't sure. She tried to stop breathing and then she could hear it. A quiet scraping sound. Like the window slowly sliding upward in the window frame. Bella was facing the wall and she didn't dare turn around. She had wanted to talk but now she was paralysed. Was that really the window? Was that really Victoria? Bella continued to listen and a cold draft passed over her. As if from an open window. Then it stopped. Her heart was pounding in her ears and her eyes were wide open. She could see nothing but blackness. She waited a little more but there was only silence. Was Victoria in the room? Was she going to say anything?

Bella still had a hand up her top. Slowly she retracted it. Then she rolled over and looked into the blackness of her room. She could see nothing.

"Victoria?" she whispered.

No answer. Bella was disappointed. Either Victoria wasn't there or she was ignoring her. Bella frowned in the darkness. Fine then. She would give her something she couldn't ignore.

Bella had been fighting against it for so long and now she decided to just give up. She rolled onto her back and opened her legs under the covers. She knew vampires could see in the dark and she didn't care. She put her hand in her shorts and rubbed herself. Even just that one caress gave her shivers of sheer pleasure. She breathed in and rubbed again. More. She tossed a glance into the blackness, excited by the thought that perhaps she was being watched, and then she flung back the covers of the bed to expose herself.

She was wearing nothing but a tanktop and sleep shorts. No socks. Her hand was in her shorts, rubbing gently, and now she let her other hand creep up her top to tease one of her nipples. She moaned softly and let her body stretch, opening her legs even wider. She had her eyes closed and now she opened them and levelled a look into the darkness at her bedside. As if to invite anything unknown there to join her. She then lifted her top over her breasts and began to massage one of them and grip it in her fingers. By now she had become very wet and her shorts were getting in the way. She responded to this frustration by lifting her hips and pushing her shorts and panties down her legs until they were completely off. After that she was entirely naked and she spread her legs again.

It was cold in the room but her skin felt like it was on fire. Her clit had become hard and swollen and she was toying with it between her fingers while her other hand clutched at one of her breasts. Her body was heaving and she was breathing heavily into the darkness. She could feel the orgasm approaching and she only hoped Victoria could see it. She wanted Victoria to see everything. To see how weak she was and how desirable and how easy to take and claim and make hers. She had her eyes closed, smiling, and her scent was filling the room. She could only imagine what it was doing to Victoria if Victoria was there. She stretched her legs wider and moaned and she could feel it coming and—

A hand clamped down over her mouth.

A cold hand, roughly smothering down her lips. Her eyes flew open in the darkness and she tried to scream but it was muffled almost to silence in that frozen palm. Her body twisted and her legs kicked out reflexively and—

Two fingers impaled her vagina.

The sudden penetration caused her entire body to buck off the mattress and she screamed again into the hand. It came out as little more than a squeak. She began to thrash her naked body but something growled in the darkness and held her down and then those fingers stabbed in again, over and over, deeper and deeper. Bella screamed and cried and began to climax spastically. Her eyeballs rolled up in her head and her body twisted in a hysteria of helplessness and the hand over her mouth held her down and muffled her shrieks of pain and terror and ecstasy while that other hand attacked her virginity into a savage series of orgasms that seemed to kill her and kill her and kill her again.

When it was over she was nothing but quivering heap of sweat and nakedness. The hand remained at her mouth until her sobs tapered to whimpers and then it went away. Bella looked up into that pitiless black, shivering, her arms clutched to her chest. Her eyes were crying but there was no fear in them. Only a silent supplication to the darkness above to take her away with it and keep her forever but the darkness did not respond.

She lay there for a long time, shivering in the cold, and then she got up and turned on the light. The room was empty. The window was closed. Bella rubbed her arms for a while, naked, and then she fetched up her clothes and got dressed. It hurt between her legs to move but there was no blood or damage. She sniffed a couple times to herself but she didn't know what these emotions were. She didn't know if they were even emotions at all. She took one last look at the room and then she turned off the light and went back to bed.

—


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: Just a heads up, this is the final chapter. In light of feedback, I think it's best. It hasn't turned out exactly the way I wanted and most people seem to have lost interest already anyway.**

—

Chapter 5:

—

It started raining in the night and it was raining when Bella woke up in the morning. The previous night felt like a strange and incredible dream but the proof was in the pain between her legs. She called Victoria several times but there was no answer. She began to get angry. Bella deserved an explanation or at least a conversation. Her father had been called to an emergency at work and after a while she decided to get in her truck and go see Victoria face to face.

She drove fast on the slick wet roads and she reached the house in under an hour. It had begun to rain harder. She had forgotten to bring a jacket and her t-shirt was wet as soon as she stepped out the truck. The sky was dark and gray. A storm moving in. Bella marched up to the front door and pounded on it with her fist.

"Victoria!" she shouted over the rain. "Open the door!"

She pounded again. Victoria wasn't answering and now she was getting very pissed off.

She went into the yard and looked at the window to the livingroom. Then she cast about for something to break it with. There were some loose bricks along the edge of the path that led to the mailbox and she squatted down in the rain with her long hair dangling and wriggled one of the bricks free. Then she rose and turned and hurled it through the window.

The window broke in a great crash of glass. A row of jagged spikes remained along the bottom edge of the window and Bella didn't even know if she could climb through. The curtain was closed and rustling in the rainswept wind and she was about to try and climb in when the curtain flapped out angrily and Victoria emerged with a snarl.

Bella stumbled and fell back on the wet grass. Victoria towered over her.

"What do you think you're doing?!"

Bella was incredulous. "Me?!"

Victoria's red hair was already getting wet and dark. She pointed back at the window. "I can't afford to have this place vandalized, you stupid girl!"

Bella glared at her tearfully. "You didn't have a problem vandalizing _me_."

That bought the woman up short. She looked down at the girl on the grass, the rain soaking through her hair and her clothes, and then she shook her head.

"It doesn't matter," she said. "I'm leaving town, anyway. Congratulations, Ms Swan, you get to live. Have a nice life."

Then she spun around and went in through the front door. Bella scrambled to her feet and followed.

"Victoria!" she shouted as she chased her up the stairs. "Don't you think we should talk?"

The rain was more muted inside the house. Victoria had stormed into her bedroom and now she was ripping open the dresser drawers and throwing all her clothes into a pile.

"Victoria, please," Bella said. "Just talk to me."

"We have nothing to talk about."

"Yes, we do."

Victoria ignored her and continued ransacking the drawers. Bella watched her for a second while the rain spattered on the window and then she took Victoria's arm to try and force her to stop.

"Victoria, stop," she said. "Stop!"

Bella tried to wrench her away from the dresser but it was like trying to wrench a solid stone statue. Victoria spun around and grabbed her wrists roughly and threw her back on the bed. Bella bounced there and froze on the mattress while Victoria advanced a seething step.

"Do not anger me, Ms Swan," she growled. "Not now."

Bella glared up at her from the bed. "What is your problem, Victoria? You're the one who hurt me. I'm the one who should be upset."

"You're too stupid to be upset."

"Don't call me that."

"Shut up! You've ruined everything!"

Tears came into Bella's eyes. She couldn't understand why Victoria was angry with her. "What? What did I ruin?"

"Everything!" Victoria burst out. "Everything was perfect before I met you! Now James is dead and I can't even avenge him! I can't do anything!"

Victoria's red eyes were wild and her hair was dark and wet and now she calmed slightly and scoffed at the girl on the bed.

"But you," she said, "you wouldn't understand. So eager to move on from your mate. Even with someone like me. I told you your feelings were nothing compared to mine."

"Edward wasn't my mate."

"No. But James was mine."

Bella was leaning back on her elbows and gazing up from a position of submission with her wet t-shirt clinging to her breasts. Like a woman waiting to be made love to, only her eyes were filled with tears and she couldn't understand any of this. "It wasn't my fault," she said. "You can't blame me."

"Then who am I supposed to blame? Who?!"

Bella jumped and her voice came out meek. "James," she said. "Blame James."

"How dare you."

"I'm sorry, but it's true. He knew the risks in coming after me and he did it anyway. It was his own fault. He overestimated himself."

"Enough."

But Bella could see that she'd found a weak spot and now she shifted to sit up on her knees. "You're allowed to be angry with him, Victoria," she told the wild redhead. "He put you both in danger and he got himself killed. He left you. He left you all alone."

Victoria's eyes looked like they wanted to cry but as a vampire she couldn't. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"Maybe not, but I know you like me. And I like you too. So why can't we just…"

"What? Just what?"

Bella didn't know how to answer. Outside a low rumble of thunder moved over the forest. Victoria shook her head. She still had a handful of clothes in her hand and now she tossed it onto the pile and stared at it.

"My life is meaningless without James," she said.

Bella rose from the bed and approached Victoria. All sense of danger had fled her by this point and all she had inside her was the desire to be with this woman who had come to her in her darkest hour and gave her new fire. Victoria watched her and slowly Bella put her hands at her waist and snaked them around and tightened them into a hug.

Victoria didn't move. The girl had laid her head on Victoria's shoulder and after a while Victoria raised her arms and hugged her back. So warm. So soft. She closed her eyes for a moment but there was no more longing to kill this girl. The only longing she felt was to keep her. But the betrayal to her fallen mate was something she could never condone and after a few minutes she began to push the girl away gently.

"Go home," she said.

"I don't want to."

"Just go. It's okay."

"Why?"

Victoria cupped her warm and wet cheek and even offered her a weak smile. "I'm sorry, Ms Swan," she said. "I truly am. For everything I've put you through. You're a special girl. You have a peculiar heart. I don't pretend to understand it but I can see how valuable it is. Whoever you give it to will be a very lucky person. Now go."

"Victoria—"

"Go!"

Victoria gave her a violent shove backwards. Bella stumbled and fell on her side. She winced from the pain in her hip and between her legs and as she went to push herself up she saw something hidden under the bed.

The kerosene cans.

It gave her a bad feeling to see them concealed there like that but it wasn't important right now. She struggled up to her feet and turned to face Victoria. Lightning flashed in the gray window beside that tempestuous redhead and the thunder cracked after it.

"Leave now, Ms Swan," Victoria said. "This is the last time I will tell you."

Bella didn't want to go but she didn't want to risk making things worse either. "Can I call you later?"

"Tomorrow. Call me tomorrow."

"Okay. You're not going to leave town, are you?"

"No. I'm staying right here."

"Because we have to talk."

"I know. Get out of here, Ms Swan. I have to be alone right now."

Bella backed away to the bedroom door. More thunder rumbled. Victoria had her eyes closed and a hand in her wet red hair, as if she had a lot on her mind, and Bella knew she did need some time.

"Okay," Bella said. "I'll go. But call me if you want to talk, okay?"

Victoria nodded without opening her eyes and Bella hesitated a moment before turning and leaving.

The storm got worse until the noon was almost as dark as evening, the black clouds thick and heavy and the thunder cracking down relentlessly. The power had gone out and Bella sat in her room with her notebook of poetry, thinking about nothing but Victoria. She was worried. She had said she wasn't going to leave town but what if she was only saying that to get rid of Bella? What if she was leaving town right now?

The other thing that worried her was those cans of kerosene. Victoria had never struck her as suicidal—until this morning.

Bella frowned and tried not to think it about for now. Victoria told her to call tomorrow and that's what she'd do. Her hair was completely dry by the time her father got home so she didn't have to explain why she was out or where she went. She didn't know what she would say, anyway.

She kept her phone at her side all day and into the night but Victoria never called. Bella never called either. It was still raining when she went to bed and she was lying awake for a long time with a bad feeling in her stomach like a virus. She couldn't stop thinking about Victoria leaving town. Or worse. She didn't know how long she lay there but it was long enough that the rain slackened and finally stopped. Then all there was only darkness and silence.

Eventually Bella couldn't take it anymore and she got up. She called on the phone but there was no answer and instead she got changed and grabbed the keys to her truck.

She snuck out without waking her dad and took the wet black road north. Toward the old Cullen house. Victoria might be pissed off but she didn't care. She had to see her and she had to tell her how she felt. Because she had finally figured it out. She loved her. As wrong and fucked up as it was, it was true. Bella wanted to be with her and Bella knew Victoria felt the same.

The realization gave her heart but then her heart plummeted all the way down again as she noticed smoke rising into the moonless night in the distance.

And an orange glow in the trees.

The breath seemed to collapse out of her. Her hands went slack on the wheel and she almost went off road. The fire was coming from around the next bend—directly where the Cullen house would be. Bella knew immediately what had started it. The kerosene. Victoria couldn't live without James and her feelings for Bella only made her all the more guilty. And now she might be—

Bella hit the gas harder and fished her phone out of her pocket. In her panic she couldn't remember the proper number for the fire department and instead she called her dad on the house phone. It rang for a long time while Bella drove with one hand and eventually her father picked it up and spoke in a voice that was cautious against some kind of emergency.

"Hello? Who is this?"

"Dad, it's me," Bella said. "You have to call the fire department. Right now."

"Bella? Is that you?"

"Yeah."

His voice went rough with anger. "Bella, what the hell is going on? Where are you?"

There was no way she could explain everything but right now all she cared about was trying to help Victoria. "I'm at the Cullen's old house," she said. "It's on fire."

"Fire? What the hell are you talking about? Why aren't you in bed?"

"Dad, please. Just call the fire department for me, okay? I wasn't sure which number to call. It's an emergency."

"Jesus, Bella, are you alright? Are you in the house?"

"No, I'm not there yet. I'm still driving but I can see it. Please, just call the fire department. The address is 1719 Meadow Lane. You know the address, don't you?"

"Bella, I want you to turn around and come home right now. Right now, do you hear me?"

"Just call them, dad. 1719 Meadow Lane. Hurry."

"Bells—"

"I love you," she said out of some fey instinct of impending death, and then hung up.

She threw the phone on the seat beside her and pressed down on the pedal even harder. In less than two minutes she came around the bend and saw what she feared—the entire house ablaze.

She could hear the roar of the fire as she pulled up and she could feel the heat of it as she got out. Flames were licking up the outside walls and steam was rising from the wet grass like souls from the ground as if the burning house occupied some special pocket of hell encroached here upon the living world.

"Victoria!" Bella screamed at the house. "Are you in there?!"

She lifted an arm, as if to block away the heat, and searched the yard briefly. Nothing. She looked around the side of the house and ran around the back. The blaze was well-advanced and the windows were beginning to pop outward in small explosions of glass. Bella looked up at the back of the house to where Victoria's bedroom window was. The smoke was billowing up into the black of the sky and the heat caused sweat to break out over her face.

She looked down and saw the sliding doors that led into the kitchen. They were broken like all the rest of the glass and the interior was in flames like a portal to hell.

Victoria could be inside and she still might be alive and Bella knew what she had to do. She took off her jacket and wrapped it around her head to protect her hair and then she took a deep breath and charged in.

The heat was incredible. She avoided direct contact with the flames but she didn't know how long she could last in here. The kitchen counter was bare. The refrigerator and the blood all gone. Victoria must've gotten rid of any trace that someone had lived here. Bella released her breath and took another one. It was full of heat and smoke. She coughed and ventured further into the house.

She found Victoria in the livingroom. Completely naked so that she would leave behind nothing at all, not a stich of clothing, nothing. Standing there among the burning furniture with her body bathed in the orange glow like some redheaded demon seeking to return to the flames from whence she came. Bella stumbled toward her through the heat. She was soaked with sweat and already beginning to lose consciousness.

"Victoria," she wheezed. "Victoria…"

Victoria turned and caught Bella as Bella collapsed. The jacket slid off her head and fell to the floor. The burning house continued to rage all around them.

"Bella," Victoria said. It was the first time she had ever said her name.

"Victoria," Bella wheezed again. "Victoria, you have to get out of here."

She was trying to pull Victoria away. Her eyes were half closed and she could hardly stand. Victoria didn't budge. Instead she took Bella's face in her hands, those palms like pure ice against the blaze of Bella's cheeks, and shook her head softly.

"No," she said. "I have to stay here."

Bella coughed. Her eyes were red from the smoke swirling through the room and leaking tears. "Please," she rasped. "Don't do this."

"Go, Ms Swan. Get out."

"No."

"It's okay. You're young. You'll be alright."

Bella shook her head and wrapped her arms around Victoria, there in the middle of all that fire, pressing her face into the crook of her neck for the coolness of it.

"No," she said. "I'm staying with you…"

Victoria didn't reply. Bella was slumped against her cold nakedness and Victoria put her arms around her. She looked out at the swirling flames, the billowing smoke. She held the girl in her arms and warred against the desires of her heart. She tried to lift Bella's face but Bella's head only lolled lifelessly. She had fallen unconscious. Victoria gazed at that dreamless face while the fire raged all around them and then she hefted Bella into her arms and carried her like a bride from this damnation.

She kicked down the front door and the door exploded out into the yard in a shower of sparks. Victoria emerged from the fiery doorway with Bella in her arms and then she laid the girl in the dark and dew soaked grass.

She was still unconscious. Victoria patted her pale and smoke smeared cheek. She didn't stir. Her heart wasn't beating. Victoria brushed a thumb over those soft and lovely lips and then she leaned down and breathed into them, holding her nose closed. Then again. She put her hands on the girl's chest and pressed down five times and breathed into her mouth again, breathing the life back into her, and finally Bella's heart began to beat again.

She woke in a fit of coughing and she coughed until her lungs were raw. Then she lay back and gazed up at Victoria with weeping eyes. The woman was entirely naked and with her redhair and lusciously exposed breasts she looked less like an angelic saviour and more like some sultry demon who'd taken her from the flames for her own purposes.

"Victoria," Bella whispered weakly.

Victoria gazed at her sadly. "You stupid girl."

"I'm sorry."

In the distance came the sirens of firetrucks. Victoria could see the flashing lights miles down the road in the darkness and she went to rise. Bella snatched her arm.

"Don't go," she said, and the urgency of her words made her cough again.

Victoria knelt there and touched her face. "I have to," she said. "They can't find me here."

"Then take me with you."

"I can't."

"Kill me then."

"What?"

"Kill me. Please."

Victoria caressed her cheek. Bella blinked up at her with her round brown eyes that were full of tears and there was nothing in them at all but the desire to belong to Victoria—one way or another.

Victoria began to gather her up in her arms. Bella winced at the ache in her lungs. Behind them the house was entirely engulfed in flames and there was the occasional crash and boom of roofbeams collapsing in great cascades of sparks that rose into the smoke and the night.

Victoria brushed Bella's hair from her throat. The sirens of the firetrucks were getting closer. Bella smiled at her.

"Thank you," she whispered.

Victoria looked at her. "For what?"

"For making me feel alive again."

Victoria stroked her hair away and watched the peace settle over the girl's smoke stained face. She brushed her knuckles over the girl's throat. Bella sighed and her eyes fluttered. Victoria gave her a small smile.

"Is this what you want?"

"Yes," Bella whispered. "And I know you do too."

But now Victoria's smile grew and she shook her head. "No," she said. "Not anymore. I want something else."

"What?"

"You," Victoria whispered softly. "Just you."

Then she swooped down and bit into Bella's neck.

Bella gasped and closed her eyes. She could feel the heat from the burning house and she could hear the sirens of the firetrucks but none of it mattered. Victoria growled into her neck and bit deeper, wrenching at the flesh like a dog, and Bella gasped again and smiled and wrapped her arms around Victoria's neck. She could feel Victoria's venom entering her system and right before she passed out she realized that Victoria wasn't actually drinking her blood. She only seemed to be pumping her body with venom.

—

The transformation took five days. Victoria carried her to a lake in the forest and laid her down on the shore and held her down when her body buckled from the pain. She fed her from the remaining blood bags she had stashed away and stripped off her clothes and washed her with water from the lake. Bella was in too much pain to speak but on the fifth night she woke to a sky full of stars and no more pain. She blinked and sat up. She was naked and her legs were long and lustrous in the moonlight and she could see her breasts and her hands. Her skin was perfectly white in a way it had never used to be and she wasn't cold at all.

Victoria was in the lake. The water came to her hips and she was standing in the center of it. Her hair was dry and dark red and she was watching Bella. The lake was pitch black and shimmering like satin an a collection of stars twinkled on its surface like diamonds on a jeweller's blackcloth. Bella looked at Victoria and rose and made her way into the lake. Wading into the cool water until the water came up to her hips. Her body was alive with sensations and she took a handful of the water and let it spill and then she looked at Victoria.

"You turned me," she said.

Victoria cupped her cheek and gazed into her eyes. "I've already lost one mate," she said. "I couldn't bear to lose another."

Bella smiled at her. Victoria leaned down slightly and Bella lifted her face to complete the distance. Their mouths connected in a kiss and Bella wrapped her arms around Victoria's neck. She pressed her breasts into the other woman's chest and moaned and opened her mouth for the other woman to deepen the kiss. The water flowed around their legs and trickled in the quiet and in all that cold and all that wetness they continued to burn for each other as they would now forever.

—

**AN: That's it. Sorry for the abruptness, but I wanted some of you guys to at least have an ending. I wish it had turned out a lot more differently. I've really grown to love Victoria and I really wanted to give her an epic story. Anyway, thanks for reading. As short as it was, I hope you liked it.**


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